


Up in Smoke [Maka x Soul]

by The_Rabbit_re



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Language, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 51,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22795033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Rabbit_re/pseuds/The_Rabbit_re
Summary: Preview: Maka wakes up from months of being in a coma only to find herself in a room without her memories, and with a boy named Soul who she feels inexplicably attached to. A failed mission to stop the fourth, and previously unknown Gorgon sister from breaking the treaty between the witches and Lord Death put her here; and now to get her memories back, both Maka and Soul have to go back to where it all went wrong. [This is set after the end of the manga.]
Relationships: Maka Albarn & Soul Eater Evans, Maka Albarn/Soul Eater Evans
Comments: 34
Kudos: 123





	1. Clockwork

Generally speaking, I never really minded studying; part of me might even say I enjoyed it. There was something evidently pleasing about knowing I could learn something new to such a complete extent so quickly.

To go from knowing nothing to knowing everything in the matter of hours, maybe minutes or days.

All I had to do was sit down and learn, sacrifice a little sleep and a little bit of a social life- in exchange to understand something I didn’t before. At the very least, my parents were proud of me.

“Now, in medical school you’ll need to know all of this. But,” The teacher on my laptop hesitated, someone off screen had asked him a question video subscribers weren’t privy to. He was more or less average, some dark almost black hair drifting against his eyes as he spoke. He continued. “For the MCAT you really only need to know osteoblast, and osteoclast. Osteoblast is the breakdown of bone in remodeling, whereas osteoclast is the buildup-” 

He was interrupted again, but instead of it being a student in his class it was by my phone blaring an alarm. My three hours were up. I paused the video, shutting my laptop.

“Guess I’ll pick up from there tomorrow Medusa.” My cat didn’t move. She continued to lay sprawled out, a black smudge against my white carpet. 

I really didn’t mind studying, but the MCAT was a whole other story. I didn’t have to check the time on my phone to know it was well past midnight. Didn’t so much as bother to look at the time as I shuffled from my desk to my bed dragging my blanket with me. 

A text lit up on my phone: Megan, did you die?

Rose had texted me wondering why I hadn’t replied in hours. 

No. I was just studying. 

She wouldn’t reply until tomorrow. Unlike me she didn’t stay up all night studying for exams that were months away, nobody really did.

Sleep wasn’t hard to find, drifting off to the sound of that same distant voice I always heard had become a soothing habit. “Maka.” It called as if underwater. I used to try and follow the voice, dig down into the black waters it bubbled from. I never found it, whatever was calling for me. Instead I had learned to ignore the voice after a doctor told me I suffered from auditory hallucinations. A diagnostic I’d refused to believe for some time, insisting that voice was real. 

But tonight was different. I was asleep and yet the voice was clearer. “Maka I’m so sorry.” 

In the darkness I tried to turn my head, but there was no body part to move. It was just my mind in a never ending darkness. Everywhere I looked was the same absence of anything as if I wasn’t moving at all. 

“I miss you.” Again, the voice was clear, clear as if it was in the same darkness with me. 

“Well this won’t do.” Another voice rattled from beside me, a different kind of voice. It was annoyed. 

“Am I dreaming?” Now I was on black and red tile that never ended, going deeper and deeper into the darkness. 

But I could move. 

I held my hand in front of me flipping it over. “Maka.” My head followed the voice this time. His voice. But who was he?

“He’s rather persistent.” I looked down; a small devil stood beside me tapping one long clawed finger against his face. He smiled a toothy grin. “I think I’m finally losing you, although I have quite enjoyed our time together. Perhaps it’s time to try another approach.”

“What’re you talking about?” 

The little devil just laughed. “I guess you could say I have a personal vendetta.” He stepped closer offering me his hand. “And not even against you. Shall we?”

I took his hand, but he didn’t lead me anywhere. He jerked me down to him before shoving his free arm into my mouth where it turned to liquid running like black blood down my throat; he melted away into nothing, choking me as I melted with him. 

And then there was only darkness. 

I wasn’t sure how long passed before I felt the weight of my body again, but it wasn’t my body, not like it was before. I thought I was awake and yet I couldn’t open my eyes, only felt the weight of the skin lidded against them. The breath rattling shallowly in my throat, which was dry and sore. Or was that even my breath? I didn’t feel like I was breathing and then I felt like I was choking. I couldn’t even remember if I had a dream. Maybe this was the dream. 

A steady beep filled the space around me, counting like clockwork the pace of my heart. Whenever it thudded in my chest the mechanical sound alerted the room again. I wanted to go back to sleep. This room, it was unpleasant. 

“Maka?” That voice. “Maka.” It sounded again worried. He was worried. Or was he cautious, maybe a little excited? His voice was hoarse, there was an edge to it, an end note that rose with anticipation into the air like a child’s lost balloon waiting to burst. 

Again, I asked my eyes to open. Again, to do anything. But they remained closed. There hadn’t been anyone in my room when I went to sleep. Why was there someone here now?

It had to be a dream or a night terror. I stopped trying to move ignoring the foreign feeling in my throat and willed myself to drift back into the darkness. To drift away from this place. 

This time I did dream.

I was standing at the edge of the woods; the wind that drifted out towards me blew the white skirt back against my thighs lightly. Making the skirt feel as though it were wet. 

“Soul?” I called at the forest edge straining to see into the darkness. 

I didn’t have any shoes on. The ground was cold against my feet, grass wet with dew clinging to my ankles like chains telling me not to move. 

“Soul?” I felt a tug in my chest, an invisible ribbon wrapped around my rib cage telling me which way to go. I heeded the tug stepping into the woods, the grass leaving thin, stinging trails of blood across my ankles as I moved- one final warning before I stepped into the shadow of the woods. 

The weight of my body returned in full this time. Now I knew I was breathing, each breath dragging along the dryness in my throat like knives. It made me want to cough, but that function was lost on me. 

I shifted my arm just barely, becoming aware of the tubes tapped against me. Then I felt the needles. The mechanical beeping returned, but this time it spiked urgently repeating the faster beat of my heart. 

My right arm was free, and I reached over to drag whatever needles penetrated my left arm out, wanting to be free of this room. To be free of the beeping scrapping against my eardrums with each beat of my heart. I still couldn’t find the muscle to open my eyes. 

As soon as my free hand landed on the tubes in my arm, fingers wrapping around the warm plastic fully prepared to tear the connected needles away, my breath catching in my throat in preparation of the pain, a hand smacked against mine firmly holding it still. 

“Maka?” It was that voice. The same voice from my hallucinations. 

Maybe I’d just finally really lost my mind. Maybe this was a hospital for the mentally insane. The monitor spiked again, heartbeat drumming faster. My breath started coming out in confused rasp almost like a growling mountain lion.

“Hey.” His voice went up an octave with the monitor. “Hey, it’s okay. Don’t pull those out.” His fingers coaxed mine free of their death grip. He took my hand for a second squeezing it before setting it aside. “Let me help you.” 

I didn’t know why, but I trusted that voice. At the very least it had always been with me. Keeping still, I let him take over. 

I felt the tape peel back from the inside of my elbow, the metal sliding from my arm with ease like it was something he’d done a thousand times before. It didn’t hurt. But as soon as I was free both of my hands went searching for whatever was attached to my heart. He beat me to it, carefully pulling the sticky attachment from my chest. My heart took a step back, its pattern less frantic in my chest without the constant mechanical beeping to remind it of its job. 

“Can you hear me?” I felt a hand land on my check as gently as a butterfly, as though he thought I might break. 

I found the muscles to nod my head slowly, felt my hair tangle against the pillow behind me. 

His voice was calmer now. I heard him take a breath, a very controlled breath.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out, only air in one quick gust like someone had knocked it out of me. 

Another hand landed gently on my chest. “Can you open your eyes?”

I shook my head no. 

“Can you slow your breathing?”

I think I can do that. I hadn’t realized how fast it still was. I concentrated on it, counting the seconds in and out. One, two three, four five six…one two three four five six…

His hand slid up across my forehead brushing back strands of hair, strands which had probably been covering the eyes I couldn’t figure out how to open. 

“Maka.” His voice was just a whisper. 

And then the world went dark.

I didn’t dream of the woods again.

The next time I woke up there was no beeping. When I moved my arms there were no tubes there to restrain them. When my eyes finally opened the room was dark. I was right- I was in a hospital, but I had no idea what for. I picked my hands up in front of me. They were my hands, but they weren’t. They looked wrong, felt wrong. Just the act of picking up my arms felt like an immense exercise, like both of my hands were ten pound weights. And they were thin, fragile, a word I had never associated with myself. Fragile. 

I placed my own hands on my face trying to rub the weight from the skin, Fingers running beneath the eyes I was now afraid to close. Afraid they would refuse to open again. I looked down at my legs and they moved too curling back up towards my body. I leaned forward wrapping my arms around my legs. I didn’t feel injured just- heavy. 

That’s when I noticed the chair beside my bed, a chair with a boy. He was maybe a foot away from me; I could reach to touch him if I dared, but he was asleep. The dim light from the windows behind him outlining his features. He looked so tired; even asleep there were dark circles under his eyes and I found myself wondering when the last time he slept was. His hair was white, defiantly rising into the air like it had been tousled by someone’s hand only moments before. 

I couldn’t take my eyes away from his face. I felt like I knew him, but I didn’t even know his name. 

I put my head between my knees trying to keep from hyperventilating, trying not to wake the boy and trying to wake up all at once. I went to sleep in my room and woke up in a hospital. How? Why?

What could have possible happened while I was asleep. Can you really lose your mind in one night? Apparently, you can. 

Suddenly I was aware of my bladder, it deciding to release the full force of its fullness into my consciousness. I had to pee. 

I looked back up, behind the boy was only a window, to his left a wall and various hospital machinery. To my right was two doors, and I was willing to bet one of them was a bathroom. 

Surely, I could walk to the bathroom. I slid my legs across the bed as quietly as I could, like my arms they felt leaden like someone had tied weights to my ankles as well. I inched my legs closer to the ground, bare feet coming into contact with the cool tile, condensation immediately pooling against the warmth of my toes. I pushed off from the bed standing up on my feet for all of maybe two seconds before I went crashing onto the unnaturally white floor. 

So much for not waking the boy. 

My hands reached out for anything I might could grab to keep me from falling, only to flip over a small table with me. The sound of it hitting the ground was far from silent and was immediately echoed by the sound of another chair hitting the floor- presumably the one the boy had been sitting in because not a moment later there were hands under my shoulders pulling me up from the ground. 

“Maka? Are you okay?” Worry was evident in his voice, which was breathless like someone had just scared him to death. I suppose I just had. Maka. 

Why did he keep calling me that? He set me back on the bed but didn’t let go of me, hands quickly traveling over the rest of my body like I might have broken a bone. He had a ring on his finger, on his left hand, its band a white gold. It was pretty. 

“Soul?” A voice that wasn’t mine spoke. I didn’t know that name and yet I did. I knew that name. His head jerked to my face; his eyes were startlingly red and wide open.

“Yes.” Was all he said. 

“I don’t. I don’t remember anything.” Again, not my voice came out of my mouth. What the Death. 

“What’s the last thing you remember?” He said it like he didn’t want to ask, the words coming out slowly like they were painful to even hear.

“I was studying for an exam, and then I went to sleep, and I woke up here. How did I get here? What happened?” Who are you?

His hands slid from my body slowly, his hand lingering on mine before pulling free. I wanted to reach for him, but I didn’t, not understanding the impulse. I didn’t know him. 

“What exam?”

“The MCAT, the exam to get into medical school.”

Then I saw it, I don’t know how I didn’t see it before- the worry hidden behind the dark circles around his eyes; the wrinkles across his forehead as he looked away trying to hide his expression; the tightness to his lips masking whatever expression could be held there. 

I looked down at his hand again, looked at the ring. “Are you married?” 

I don’t know why that question felt important. 

His head jerked back towards me, his eyes meeting mine. Hurt. He was hurt. He’d lost whatever control he had over his expression, lips no longer a tight line. It was like I had punched him. “Do you know who I am?”

I wanted to say yes. To do anything to take that look off his face, the look that was twisting my gut unnaturally, but I also couldn’t lie to him. “No.”

“Do you know my name?”

The name I called him felt a thousand years away now. I couldn’t even remember what it was. I knew his name. What was his name? Soul. My heart held onto that one word like a weapon. “Soul.”

“My full name?” His voice was a whisper of what it had been.

“Soul-” My eyes started to burn as my voice broke off. “I- I don’t know.”

I looked away from him at the wall. I couldn’t stand to see the expression his face held anymore. 

His hand landed against my face again, I flinched and I hated myself for it. His hand fell from my face as he said. “I’m going to go get Stein.”

I didn’t look as he left the room. The door closing behind him was painfully loud in the silence. 

“Soul.” I said to myself. 

I’d forgotten I had to pee, but the bathroom felt even farther away now. I felt far away. 

Sometime passed, or maybe it was no time before the door opened again. I couldn’t tell. I looked for the boy to come back, but it wasn’t him.

“Hello.” A taller man in a lab coat, which was stitched together like Frankenstein, said as he walked into the room. His hair was gray and fell across his face. 

I almost didn’t notice the giant screw sticking out of his head until he reached up to adjust it. 

“Hi.”

“I’m Doctor Stein; I’m guessing you don’t know that.”

“Should I?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s been a while. Can you tell me your name?”

“Megan.”

He shifted the screw in his head again. 

“That’s not my name is it.”

“No.” He looked as though he was calculating math in his head. He turned the light in the room on. His face was harder to read than Soul’s had been, almost emotionless. 

“My name is Maka?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what he called me.”

“Soul?”

Soul. 

He continued. “Tell me what you remember.”

So, I did. I told him about my cat and my life in college and my parents- the test I was studying for. And the more I talked about it the more and more the words felt wrong in my mouth like they couldn’t possibly be true, like I was telling the story of someone else’s life, but it was all I could remember. “There’s something else.”

He waited.

“I kept hearing this voice where I was, but it always sounded like it was far away, underwater. It was him. It was Soul’s voice that I heard and before I woke up here it got clearer. How do I know this is real?” How do I know I didn’t finally lose my mind?

“You don’t.” He shifted the screw in his head again. “But does it feel real?”

Yes. But where was I. Where am I? “A doctor, he told me I was having auditory hallucinations. This could all just be a hallucination.”

“Or, everything before could have been.” He walked closer to my bed. “You asked Soul what happened and he didn’t tell you; so, I’m going to tell you. You’re not Megan, not here. Your name is Maka Albarn and you’re a meister. Death the Kid sent you on a mission seven months ago about reports of a witch in violation of the treaty, it went poorly, and you were injured. You’ve been in a coma for just under six months. Physically you’ve been healed for some time now, but you didn’t wake up.”

It felt surreal, everything he was saying. This had to be a dream. “Why didn’t I wake up.” I asked anyway. Might as well play along, if I was losing my mind anyway. 

“I wasn’t sure at first, but. May I?” He gestured to my chest. I wasn’t sure what for, but I nodded. 

He pulled the shoulder of my gown down allowing it to fall to my waist revealing what was beneath.

“I thought you said I was healed?”

“You are, but this cut, it wouldn’t close.”

He pulled back the bandage from beneath my left breast, a deep gash curved all the way from my sternum around my side. It was sewn shut like his jacket, but on the backside of the bandage was blood, black blood. If this was healed, I didn’t want to know what injured was. 

“Black blood, which means more to me than it does to you without your memories. Think of it like an infection, but not one that invites an illness, it invites insanity.”

The image of a little red devil flashed it my mind, the memory of him melting down my throat. This was all a dream. Part of me was tempted to stab myself with something to prove I wasn’t awake. 

“It didn’t start bleeding this color until shortly before you woke up the first time. What was keeping you asleep, it changed tactics. The question is why-”

The door to the hospital room flung open so fast it almost flew off the hinges, reverberating off the wall it collided with causing a noise that would have been loud if it were not for the voice that masked it. “MAKA! OH, MY BABY MAKA-” 

A red headed man with a five o-clock shadow of a beard came running towards me, lunging towards my bed before he abruptly hit the ground, a firm foot landing on his back. Stein said violently cold. “Were you about to tackle a patient of mine.” 

If anything, Stein’s face became more like a stone statue absent of anything sympathetic or human. 

A quiet yes sounded from the floor like a whimpering puppy. 

“You could have ripped her stitches open.”

“I WOULD NEVER HURT MY BABY MAKA!” He regained his prior energy launching up from the floor. In the midst of the disturbance, I’d had time to pull my gown back up. 

“Spirit, she doesn’t remember who you are. She doesn’t remember who any of us are.” Stein gripped the back of the red haired man’s jacket firmly, leaning close to his ear he whispered in that same violent voice. “And you will not tell her.”

“HOW DARE YOU TELL ME NOT-”

Stein cut him off again. “Do you want to hurt her?”

“NO, of course not!”

“I do not know the nature of why she cannot remember. This blood-” He lifted the black bandage to Spirits face. “Could easily react poorly to her being reminded of her past. I’ve told her the bare minimum of what she needs to know. All we can do now is wait.”

“It’s that boys’ fault. I knew he wasn’t good enough for my Maka.” Spirit rambled on. 

But that boy. He’d looked so tired, worried. 

A spark of anger flashed inside me as I suddenly yelled at the man in front of me. “Don’t say that. Don’t blame him for any of this.” You don’t even know what happened, Meg-Maka. But that boy. 

I thought I saw Stein smile. Spirit’s face turned tragic in a minute; he began to profusely apologize telling me to come home with him; telling me he was my Dad; telling me that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me. 

For some reason that annoyed me. 

“Doctor Stein.” I said over my apparent father crying to me. “I have to pee.”

“Spirit go and wait in the hallway.” Surprisingly Spirit obeyed, immediately stalking out of the room.

“Can you walk?”

“No.” Might as well be honest at this point. 

He held out an arm to me saying nothing as I limped against him to the bathroom before insisting I could pee in private. I did manage- closing the door, using the sink to balance my way over to the toilet; in the hospital gown there was nothing to pull out of the way for me to pee. I refused to look in the mirror the entire time. When I opened the door again he was gone, a walker in his place. Part of me felt like crawling to the bed instead, something about using a walker felt demeaning even if I was dreaming. I glanced towards the bed taking a step around the walker right when he spoke from the door. 

“Please don’t.” He came around the corner. “You won’t make it.”

Something stubborn in me flared up and I let go of the door in defiance taking another step towards the bed, or at least that was my intention. My foot didn’t come all the way off the ground, and I went sailing for the floor. A firm hand grabbed my arm pulling me back upright before my face could reach its doom against the tile floor. He pulled me against him for a moment before he released his grip on my arm. Before I had time to adjust my sense of balance or even look at him, the smell of him surrounded me, something warm, familiar. 

We were in a different room, I was reading on the couch when he came up behind me pulling the book from the death grip of my fingers, he put his other hand over my eyes, while he tossed the book to the floor. 

“I have a surprise for you.” That same smell roared around me like fire. 

I almost screamed, but instead I just stopped breathing, flinching back from him. I felt his hands grip my shoulders so I wouldn’t fall. A sharp pain seared behind my eye through the back of my skull like someone plucked a nerve from my brain. My hand covered it, positive it would feel wet, positive it would be bleeding. But the pain faded with the memory and when I looked at my hand it was clean. 

“What happened? Are you hurt?” His voiced was rushed. “Maka?”

“I just, I think I remembered something.” 

Without warning the world went dark again. I had the faint feeling of his arms catching me before I lost consciousness completely. 

I woke up again. This time daylight was shifting in through the window, but something was missing. Soul wasn’t in the chair in front of the window. “Soul?”

I sat up too fast, the world spinning a little. I ignored it looking towards the other door. “Soul?”

I tried to get up from the bed, legs still refusing to support my weight. Now there was a wheelchair beside my bed. Great. But when I touched the rail of the chair it melted beneath my hand, black blood smearing across the once silver surface. I jerked my hand back staring at the blood there, but then the blood was red and I wasn’t in the hospital room anymore. I was in the woods. 

Was anything real anymore?

“Soul!” I heard myself screaming. The trees loomed over me, growing larger by the second; the grass below me slithered around my calves like snakes. I tried to pull my legs free, but they wouldn’t budge. “Soul!” 

Then I saw him standing in front of what my mind screamed was a witch. But that’s not what I saw, I saw the black dog whose body leaked like liquid smoke down to the ground; its shape only holding form when the wind blew the smoke back to reveal it. The wolf was running right towards Soul and he wasn’t looking. He didn’t see. 

“Soul!” I shrieked again so loud I swore it drew blood from my throat and then I jumped in front of the black wolf made of smoke. 

When I woke up this time I bit my tongue to feel the pain, to know I was awake. Or at least awake in this night terror. What was that.

“Soul?” I said questioningly. 

I sat up looking to the left to the window, it was daytime, but he wasn’t there. Something like panic held tight in my chest urging me not to speak- a hand closing around my windpipe, waiting for that wolf to come.

“Soul?” I said anyway panic raising my voice a few octaves. “Soul.” I said louder staring at the chair like he might appear. A hand landed lightly on my back and the tightness in my chest eased in the same instance. 

“Maka. It’s okay. I’m right here.” I turned to look at him. 

“Soul.” For some reason that was the only word I could say. Something cool slid down my cheek and I raised my hand to it. I was crying. 

“What’s wrong?” He set down what he’d been holding, on the cart beside my bed; I didn’t have the brain power to register what it was. Didn’t have the space in my mind to register more than the fact that he was still here. 

“Soul.” And then I grabbed his arm pulling him towards me to make sure he was real. I had no idea who he was, but he felt so inexplicably important to me. He didn’t resist. His body followed my pull like a magnet, sitting on the bed he wrapped his arms around me as I buried my face against his chest crying. I couldn’t even say why I was crying, but the force of it shook us both. His hand slid down my back in soothing stokes. His fingers sliding over the bare skin of my spine like a surfer on waves, leaving a trail of warmth behind. 

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m right here; I didn’t go anywhere. I never went anywhere. I will never go anywhere.” The last part he said more quietly like he was talking to himself.

“In the woods.” I sobbed out. “I lost you in the woods.”

His hand paused its movement, a break in the ocean. “Maka what woods?”

“I was in the woods looking for you. And there was this wolf, that wasn’t a wolf and you didn’t see-” my words started to run together, all of them trying to get out before the next sob turned them to water. “AndIjumped infront of thewolf.” 

His arms got tighter around me. “You did.”

“Thathappened?” A sob wracked my body again.

“I thought you were going to die.”

“But it wasadream.” I tried to calm my breathing, could feel it getting out of control.

He didn’t loosen his hold on me, but he also didn’t reply. 

“Don’t do that.” My words broke back apart, though my ragged breathing still caused me to pause mid-sentence. “Don’t hide things from me.” My face was still firmly pressed against his chest and I pushed back against his arms freeing myself to look up at his face. 

“Soul am I awake? I can’t even tell if this is a dream, or if my dreams were real, if they were memories. Who am I?” 

He moved his eyes away from mine. “Maka.”

“Stein said I’m a meister, what does that mean?”

He still didn’t look at me, his hands sliding down to mine. “It means you can wield a weapon.” 

And then he let go of me abruptly apparently deciding to do something. He stepped away from the bed as he held his arm out to his side, his forearm blaring a bright light suddenly before revealing a scythe where his forearm used to be. The blade curved towards his body, the top and bottom halves of the metal coated in black and red meeting in the middle like jagged teeth. 

“I’m a weapon.” Was all he said. Somewhere along the line I had stopped crying. 

“You’re a weapon?”

“I’m your partner.” He smiled at me, his jagged teeth matching the smile on his scythe, neither smile reached his eyes. Didn’t even come close. “Stein told me not to tell you anything you couldn’t remember.”

“Why?” I don’t know why I asked, Stein had already explained in front of me, but I was having trouble remembering much of anything. 

“You grabbed your head before, before you past out. Why?” He asked instead.

“It hurt.” I raised my hand back to my eye checking for blood again. “I thought it was hurt.”

“Did you remember something before that happened?” He watched my hand. 

“I- yes. I did. Just barely, just us for a moment.” I looked away from my hand back to his face. His eyes lightened a little.

“Stein thinks the black blood is preventing you from remembering who you were, and he thinks it’ll hurt you to keep it that way.” His arm turned back into his arm, or the flesh version of his arm. “So, I can’t tell you anything you don’t remember. I won’t hurt you anymore.”

Anymore? I lowered my hand from my face, his eyes still trailing the movement. 

I started to speak to question him further, but Stein walked into the room. “Awake again?”

Soul stepped aside as Stein came closer, they eyed each other speaking without actually saying anything. 

Stein spoke out loud. “How do you feel?”

“Okay, I think.” I wanted to go home. Wherever that was. Back to my apartment to study for an exam, at least that made sense, but I didn’t want to leave Soul. 

Soul looked away as Stein checked my wound, flashed a light in my eyes, checked my heart rate, asked if I felt various things. “Maka, do you want to stay here? Or do you want to leave? Medically there’s no real reason for you to remain at the hospital.”

“Leave where?” I paused. “With my dad?” 

“To go home, wherever you think that may be. Or, if you’re more comfortable you can stay here until you start to remember.” Again, his face revealed nothing. He didn’t even touch the screw in his head as he spoke. I was afraid to look at Soul. 

Home. Where was home. I had no idea. 

“I want to go with Soul.” I blurted out. The thought barely entered my brain before it was on my lips. 

I still didn’t look at Soul. 

Stein smiled and nodded. The most human his face had looked since I met him, or re-met him, if I were to assume this was all real. 

“You heard her.” He said to Soul as he left the room. What an informal doctor. 

Soul started to walk past me without looking at me, but I grabbed his hand halting his escape. “Is that okay?” 

I looked at his hand, it was paler than mine and I hadn’t seen the sun in six months, his fingers long, smooth against my callouses. Callouses I didn’t know I had. 

“Is what okay?” He asked. 

“Going home with you, it’s just the only remnant of memory I have seems to revolve around you.” I trailed my eyes along his arm, which was hidden behind a black leather jacket, to its collar to his neck and finally his face. He smirked, the first expression to reach his eyes, raising them with the corner of his lips. 

“What kind of partner would I be if you couldn’t crash at my apartment. That wouldn’t be very cool of me.” He seemed to debate for a minute, the smirk pulling progressively harder against his face like he was laughing at some silent joke. “It’s really our apartment.”

I blushed like something out of a cartoon, heat flying to my cheeks immediately. A reaction I didn’t quite understand. 

“Here follow me.” He pulled me up by my hand leading me over to the one piece of furniture in the room, a small caramel brown dresser, where he pulled out a set of clothes and handed them to me. And then led me over to the bathroom. 

Even with the counter for support, or maybe because I had to use the counter for support, putting on a shirt, and sweatpants was ridiculously hard. I was determined not to fall and end up with him busting into the bathroom only to find me half naked on the floor; but in my determination I forgot not to look in the mirror. 

I looked like a ghost. My hair, which was dirty blond instead of the brown I remembered, fell limply against my skull. The face I found there was the same small, round face, but my eyes were a deep green. Everything about me seemed small, too skinny, too frail. No wonder I could hardly walk. 

I looked down away from the mirror, away from the ghost I found there. The shirt Soul had handed me had the name of some band I didn’t recognize on it.

“Soul?”

“Is everything okay?” He responded from the other side of the door before his name even entirely left my mouth. 

“Is this your shirt?”

Silence for a moment. “Actually, they’re all mine.”

That would explain why everything was so large. Maybe I would look less sickly in my own clothes. I didn’t say anything more as I stepped back out of the bathroom, staying upright becoming easier with every step I took. 

He still helped me into the hall where he stopped in front of a wheelchair sitting conspicuously beside the door.

“No.” 

“Maka, you can’t walk on your own. I’ve seen you try.”

“No.” I said again stubbornly. I would crawl out of this hospital before I sat in that. He sighed before continuing down the hall, leaving the chair in the distance without any more argument. Albeit slowly, as I really couldn’t walk well even if it was becoming easier. 

When we got to the front counter, he left me saying he had to go grab his keys. Everything in this hospital was so white, the walls, the chairs, even the front desk I was leaning on and the outfit of the receptionist. It all felt so foreign. Almost made it feel dirty. 

Stein came out from a door behind the counter, the door was also white. “Maka, one thing.”

“Yeah?” I said from my position leaning against the counter for support; wondering if I could maybe stand on my own if I didn’t try to move. 

“Don’t let him see that wound. It’s been-” He corrected himself. “He’s been very hard on himself.” 

And then he walked away without another word. 

Why? The word was on the tip of my tongue, but it didn’t come out because where Stein disappeared Soul appeared offering me his arm for support before we continued our slow pace to the parking lot. 

The outdoors was a reprieve from the whiteness of the hospital, even the simple black of the pavement looked cleaner. The parking lot wasn’t that large, turning back neither was the hospital from the outside. There were only a couple cars in the parking lot, and someone’s ostentatious orange Harley. It was hard to focus on much of anything, my mind split between two plains: here and wherever I was before. But that Harley. 

He came to a stop in front of that very motorcycle. “Is this your car?”

“I wouldn’t call it a car.” He said with a laugh twisting his voice.

“I can’t even walk how am I supposed to ride on that?”

“So, she admits she can’t walk.”

“Shut up. I can walk.”

“Oh really?” He acted as though he’d pull his arm away. “Then why do you have a death grip on my arm?”

I looked at my fingers which were dug very deep into his forearm. Every ounce of my being wanted to let go, but I knew if I did I would end up on the ground. 

“Please don’t hurt yourself.” He continued reading the expression on my face. “Come on. Let’s go home?” He said it like a question, like he was afraid I would say no, like he was afraid I would run back into the hospital. 

I looked at the motorcycle reluctantly, there weren’t any scratches on it, that had to say something for his driving. 

I took a step forward and he laughed again, all but picking me up and putting me on the Harley himself before getting on in front of me. “Hold on.”

I placed my hands lightly on his sides. 

“Are you trying to fall off the motorcycle.” He grabbed my hands roughly drawing them all the way around his waist, pulling me closer against his back. 

“Don’t be an idiot. Hold on tightly.” He amended.

He reached for the bars of the motorcycle, and I tried to ignore how close we were as the bike rumbled to life beneath me. 

“I’ll go slow.” 

He glanced back at me, but I wasn’t looking at his face. I was looking at his left hand, and the ring that was no longer there. Maybe I’d been seeing things. Maybe that was part of my dream, my head trying to make everything complicated. 

I wonder if my cat would be okay. If I never go back there. If this is real, was she not?

He looked forward before I could look to his face for answers and we sped off to wherever home was.


	2. Pieces

When we pulled up against the curb on some street in Death City, the name Soul had given the city on the way here, ominous as it sounds, I was hoping I would recognize something- anything; but all I saw was a normal curb. A curb that led to a building aside an array of other buildings about the same size, all varying shades of blue with a random few yellows thrown in, some of the walling even had a random reddish pink tone. 

“I regret to tell you-” Soul started to speak up as he removed himself from the motorcycle, offering me a hand. “We live on the top floor, the third floor to be exact.”

I took his hand, making my slow way off the motorcycle. My thighs already sore from holding on unnecessary like I was riding a horse. “No elevator?”

“No elevator.” He didn’t let go of my hand, instead intertwining our fingers between us. He followed my eyes to our hands and made to let go, but I only clung on tighter. 

“I could carry you.” He rolled his head to the side to look at me, an amused expression on his face. 

“I’ll manage.” I glared at him. “Thank you.”

“Doesn’t sound like you meant that.”

But I was already leading us toward the door like I knew where I was going. He just followed, talking his hand from mine to put my arm over his shoulder instead, wrapping his arm around my waist- making himself a human crutch. 

The front door to the apartment didn’t look like the entrance to an apartment building; it just looked like the front door to a house, the old dark brown wood even had a mail slot in it. He opened the door leading us inside, where I paused. We might as well have walked into a living room, there were a few old couches in front of a TV, a desk to the right with no one behind it. He didn’t seem concerned with the lack of an attendant, as he led me over to the stairs also on the left by the couches, which led up to a hallway. The hallway feeling more like an apartment complex, various doors with numbers on either side. We walked past them all, straight to another staircase on the opposite side where we slowly made our way up the last two flights, my legs screaming by the time we got to the top. I was out of breath, attempting to part my lips just enough to breathe through without him noticing. I could’ve been on the floor panting. 

“Who designed this apartment complex.” I managed to get out without my breath catching.

“Probably a sadist. Kid won’t come in here because of the asymmetry of the stairs.” He laughed. “Sorry, you don’t remember who that is.” He looked over at me, his eyes unreadable. “Want to guess which door is ours?”

I got the joke as soon, as I looked down the hall. The third floor hall was yellow with a few stray windows on the left side looking out to the street where the orange motorcycle was. On the right wall was only one door, number 564, which considering this was the third floor didn’t make sense. 

“Very funny.” I replied, but my physique finally got the best of me and a big huff breath came out in a rush with my words.

“I should’ve carried you.” And with that he opened the door to our apartment. 

He led me over to the couch just a few feet from the door without asking, depositing me there before backing up awkwardly, uncertain of what to do with himself. He gestured to a set of crutches beside the front door. 

“Stein brought those over here a couple days ago.” He looked at my face. “For you.”

It was starting to get dark outside, liminal light shining in through the windows, but the dark circles around his eyes were embedded so deep even the dying light couldn’t hide them. Really, he didn’t look much better than I had in the mirror, his hair was clean, so were his clothes, his leather jacket and tight yellow shirt fitting him fine. But his face, it looked like he just came back from war. I leaned my head back looking up at the ceiling, closing my eyes for a moment to catch my breath. 

“What’re you thinking?” He asked from his spot. 

“I’m wondering when the last time you slept was.” And when I’m going to wake up. 

He didn’t answer, so I picked my head back up from the couch to look at him. “Have you not been sleeping?” I saw him asleep in that chair. Once. 

He changed the subject, walking over to the crutches only to offer them to me. “Want a tour?”

I took the crutches, too tired from the stairs to bother fighting him on it. Sliding them under my arms before hoisting myself off the couch, Soul hovering nearby. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“And you didn’t answer mine.” 

Suddenly I had a strong desire to hit him over the head with a book, but he smiled at me throwing off the thought. 

“I know that look.” He remarked. 

“What look?”

But he only shook his head in response, walking to the right side of the door we came in, the apparent kitchen area. “This is the kitchen.” He announced. “You do know what those are for right.”

The look I gave him only set him back to laughing. The apartment was so open, not at all like the one I remembered, the one from, well I don’t know where. The kitchen was to the right of the door, an exposed brick wall lining the back of it; all the other walls were yellow, but not an aggressive yellow- a calm yellow, pastel like sand. The counter top of the island was red, bright red, the refrigerator was too. Above the kitchen was a skylight, something I stared at for a long moment. The floors were wood, everywhere, a beautiful dark stream mixed with knots and lighter twirls. Directly in front of the door was the couch I’d previously been on, a dark green color, with a rug to match beneath it. A TV was set directly centered with the couch, a bookshelf on either side. The far wall had two doors, both shut, and a third door down somewhat of a hallway to the right of the kitchen was open. 

“It’s so open.” It’s basically my dream apartment. It is your apartment. 

“The door in the middle there is the bathroom.” He walked over to the far wall, ignoring the middle door and opening the one on the left of it. “And this is the-” He paused. “This is my bedroom.”

I peeked around the door; the wood floor continued into the bedroom as well, only stopping when it met the night sky colored walls. There was a smaller bed pushed against the wall on the far side to make room for a piano on the other. A very large and impressive piano. 

“Do you play?” I guess that was a silly question.

“Do you want to hear?” 

I looked over at him, but he was only looking at the piano remembering something I couldn’t. 

“Yes.” I stayed by the door leaning on the crutches as he walked over and sat in front of the grand piano. I didn’t notice until he sat down the dust across the keys, as if it hadn’t been touched in months. 

He set his fingers across the keys anyway, ignoring the dust there, as they began to move the ivory white of the keys was left behind by the movement of his fingertips. Where his fingers didn’t reach dust remained. The song started low, a deep, almost dark sound building toward something lighter. It was complicated, the melody.

And then it happened again. 

A different room, this one much larger. I’d followed the sound of music down a hall I didn’t know. Had found there behind two grand white doors what could have been a concert hall hidden away. When I opened the doors there was a boy at the piano, unaware of my intrusion he played. The music taking dark turns and twist, like nothing I’d ever heard. When he finished I clapped. “That was beautiful.”

“You must not know much about music.” The face that turned to greet me, his eyes were red and his hair was white. 

The pain was so much worst this time, like the nerve stripping was skipped in exchange for setting them all on fire.

“I’m Maka.” A hand held out in front of me.

“Soul Eater.”

If there had not been a wall beside me, I would’ve been on the floor, a location which was becoming quite familiar to me. I jerked my hands to my head causing the crutches to fall with a loud clang abruptly ending the sound of the piano, as I fell against the wall to my right, back hitting the door frame audibly, but I didn’t feel anything beyond my head on fire. It didn’t stop as I slid to the ground, fingers pulling too tightly against my hair, trying to feel anything else.

“Maka!” Soul was beside me in the next moment, a hand on my shoulder trying to coax me to look at him. “Maka, what’s wrong?”

I couldn’t respond to him without screaming. 

“Maka, please look at me.” His hands went to mine, trying to untangle them from my hair. 

I waited for the darkness to greet me, but nothing happened. I stayed painfully conscious. Painfully awake. I let him move one of my hands, curling my head farther between my knees, trying to keep my skull from cracking apart as my newly freed hand twisted into a death grip around the shirt covering Soul’s chest. He put a hand on top of it. 

“Maka say something. What hurts?”

I weighed the likely-hood in my head that I could speak without screaming and still didn’t like my odds. 

I felt something tug on me, in my chest just lightly. It pulled just a little more, and Soul’s hand tightened around mine which was still twisted in his shirt. And then the feeling was gone, as well as the pain in my head. 

I relaxed the grip on my hair, and his shirt. Wrapping my arms back around my legs, before leaning back against the wall so I could see his face. He looked like someone had just killed a puppy in front of him. As soon as he saw my eyes on him, he grappled with his expression, soothing it into something less terrified. 

“I remembered something.” I said with a smile, acting like my brain hadn’t just caught on fire. 

He didn’t seem ready to respond, his hand still firmly pressing mine to his chest. So, I continued. “I was following the sound of you playing down a hall, and then I came into this room where you were playing. Only you didn’t know I was there at first, and then I introduced myself to you.” He still looked scared; I wanted to touch his face. 

“Soul.” I turned my hand around in his to grab his fingers, shifting his hand against my chest instead, against my much slower heartbeat. “I’m okay.”

He still didn’t answer just staring at me wide eyed like I might disappear. Or turn to ash. 

“Is that when we first met?” I squeezed his hand trying to bring him back to reality. 

“Yes.” 

“What happened after that?”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “Maka what just happened?”

When I didn’t answer he continued. “You remembered something and you fell to the ground in pain.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” I looked away from his eyes, fully aware I was lying.

“You’re lying.”

“I want to remember.”

“It’s not worth what you just went through.” His voice caught as soon as he said it, like he realized what he just said. “Maka it’s not worth it.”

“How could you say that?” I looked back at him, but then I realized why he’d said it. He was afraid to hurt me. His face said it all, it was like a book I’d read a thousand times before; even if I didn’t remember doing so and then I couldn’t resist. 

I raised my free hand to his face, directing him to look at me. “Soul tell me what happened after that.”

“No.”

“Soul, you have to tell me. Please.” 

He stood up, pulling me up with him and then all the way off the ground carrying me bridal style to the third room. He set me down on the bed. 

“This is your room.” He backed against the wall looking at me. “Do you feel faint?”

“No.” I wanted him to come closer, even if only by an inch. 

“What happened?” He asked. 

“You first.” I countered. 

“If I tell you, will you walk me through what just happened?” He compromised.

“Yes.”

He took a breath, eyeing me cautiously. “That was when we first met. The DWMA holds a ball of sorts for potential meisters and weapons to pair up. But I hadn’t gone, and you found me in the room with the piano.” He paused before adding. “You were the first person who my playing didn’t frighten. Now tell me what happened.”

“When you started playing I remembered meeting you, the songs, they were the same. But I also acquired a headache with the memory.”

“A headache doesn’t put you on the floor Maka."

“If headaches feel like someone starting a bonfire in the middle of your brain.” I added quickly, staring at his feet. He was still wearing his shoes, skating shoes without the laces. 

“This seemed worse than at the hospital.”

“It was. I don’t know why.” I looked back up at him and the same worry creased his forehead.

“But you don’t feel faint?”

“No.”

He ran his hand through his hair forcefully; I was surprised chunks of it weren’t stuck between his fingers. “I don’t know what to do.” He said to himself, barely audible to me even though I was only a few feet away. 

“Soul. None of this is your fault. You know that right.”

“Maka you don’t even remember what happened.” A sad glint shifted across his eyes. “It’s getting late, you should get some rest.”

Part of me was afraid to go to sleep again, like I would wake up back in my other apartment and all this really would be a dream. I’m not sure my sanity would come back from that. But as he turned to leave the room, I realized I really was tired, the force of it hitting me like a truck. Before I even heard the bedroom door close, I was asleep. 

I stood in front of the forest again- wet grass clinging to my ankles. “Soul?” I called into the dark crevices between the trees. 

Only a wolf walked out to great me, its teeth hidden behind the smoke wafting from its face. It lunged. 

I woke up confused. I wasn’t in my bed, there was no cat at my feet. I wasn’t even under the covers, but there was a pair of crutches leaned against the side of the bed and it slowly came back to me. I ran my hands over my face, wondering why I even bothered to go back to sleep in the first place.

Everything still felt so uncertain. Unreal.

I leaned up, waiting for my eyes to adjust, only to realize there was a light shining beneath the bedroom door giving me more than enough light to see. Was he awake?

I looked around for a clock, but not finding one I resolved to go and figure out why the light was on myself. I shuffled myself to the side of the bed where my crutches were, my legs feeling less weighed down than they had at the hospital. They still didn’t listen. 

Shoving the crutches roughly back beneath my arms, I leaned forward off the bed heading for the door. Once it opened it wasn’t hard to tell where the light was coming from, the living room was all lit up, not by the skylight overhead but by the two lamps I somehow hadn’t noticed before, one on either side of the couch.  
I didn’t immediately see Soul, but the moment my crutches met the floor on the other side of the bedroom door the floor creaked, and I saw his head shoot up from behind the couch, a stack of papers in his hand. He looked at me, the same dark circles tattooed beneath his eyes. 

“What time is it?” I still hadn’t been able to find a clock. “Do you not own a clock?”

“Come this way.” He dropped the papers on the little black coffee table in front of the couch, using his hand to beckon me toward him. He waited and then pointed at the wall at the far side of the kitchen, causing me to turn my attention from him to the right of the small hall I had been down. 

There was a clock. “It’s past three in the morning?”

“Yeah.” He leaned his head back on the couch, looking at the ceiling absent mindedly. 

“Have you gone to sleep yet?” Surely, he’d gone to sleep at some point.

He didn’t answer. So, I made the rest of the journey to the couch sitting on the opposing end. “What were you reading?”

He started to hide the papers, which I realized were stacked on top of an envelope like they were a file. Or maybe a report? I caught one word before he slid them inside- Lykos.

“Nothing really. It’s just something Kid sent since I’m the last death scythe.” He took his hand off the file nonchalantly like they really didn’t matter. Something told me he still wouldn’t let me read them. He returned to his relaxed position, head back against the couch. 

Death scythe, what happens when a weapon eats 99 souls and 1 witch soul, they become a death scythe. “The treaty, the DWMA can’t make anymore.”

“You remember?” He picked his head up to look at me too fast, fast like he was waiting for me to fall over crippled with pain again. 

“No, not like I was there. More like my brain shouting random facts at me, like something I read in a book or learned in class.” He kept staring at me anyway, so I tacked on. “I’m fine. No headache. Can I see that?”

“No.” He answered reflexively. 

“Lykos, why does that sound familiar?” 

He didn’t answer, still cautiously watching me. 

“If Kid sent it to you is it for a mission?”

“Yes.”

“Did the mission already happen?” He turned his head back to the ceiling. A roll of frustration lapped against my chest like a wave. 

“Why can’t I remember anything.” I complained to myself more than anything. 

I wasn’t even sure he heard me until he answered. “Maka I’m sorry. I want to help you, believe me I do, but I’m not willing to hurt you for you to get your memories back.” He spoke almost as quietly as I had. 

I wanted to say it wasn’t up to him, to hit him over the head with a book; but what Stein said to me at the hospital slithered back into my brain at his words. “Soul, at the hospital you said you wouldn’t hurt me anymore what did you mean?”

“It’s my fault you got hurt.” 

It’s my fault you got hurt Soul. 

“But in my dream, I jumped in front of the wolf.”

Soul was standing in front of me and then he wasn’t, blood pooling too fast on the ground in front of us. A boy with pink hair stood over his body, smiling. “The door only opens one way.”

“Soul!”

“And why did you do that?” His voice got sharper as he turned his head to look at me. “Because it was coming for me?”

“You did the same thing for me. Crona.” That was her name. “Crona almost killed you.”

“Maka I’m the weapon. I’m your partner. It’s my job to protect you, not the other way around.” He stood up, pacing away from the couch. 

We were in an alley and I placed a hand against his scar. 

The pain followed that image, another nerve pulled from behind my eye. The pain failing in comparison to what I’d felt earlier; I ignored it standing up as well. “Soul it wasn’t your fault.”

“You still don’t remember the whole story.” 

He was right, and I didn’t know how to help him. I didn’t remember enough too. I dug for that feeling in my chest, the one from the dream, the one from earlier like it somehow might comfort him. But I couldn’t find it either. 

“I’m sorry.” Was all I could say.

“No.” He paced back toward me. “You’re not allowed to apologize for this.”

I wanted to rip my hair out by the roots. I wanted to throw my crutches across the room. Scream. Do anything but stand here and look at how twisted his face was with some emotion I couldn’t remember enough to understand. 

It was silent for a moment. 

“I’m sorry for yelling.” 

I hadn’t realized he was.

“I just want to help.” But I don’t know how. 

“Here.” He leaned to the side to grab the file from the coffee table. “Read it.”

I took the file, allowing myself to fall back onto the couch. I slid the papers out. The top of the first page did say Lykos, there was no picture with the name only a brief description. In fact, all there was, was a description. “The fourth, and previously unknown Gorgon sister.” That was all the file said. The other pieces of paper were handwritten, random guesswork like someone trying to piece together a location. It was my handwriting. 

“I wrote this?” I glanced back up to him, his expression neutral, unreadable. 

“Most of it.” He gestured to the last page. “I wrote that bit.”

“Kid didn’t send you this.” 

“He sent us the first page.” 

I started to think out loud, as my brain continued to shout random facts at me. “Medusa was one of the Gorgon sisters. And Arachne. And the black blood, that was Medusa’s work. So why would Lykos be using the same thing?”

Soul laughed, sitting down next to me he took the papers from my hands to find a sentence. “You said the same thing before.”

At least I was still the same person, even without my memories.

He put the papers back on the table. “You should try and go back to sleep. You need rest.”

He needed sleep more than I did. “What about you?”

“I still have some work to do.”

“Staring at those papers won’t give you any answers.” I pushed my crutches against the table, leaning back against the couch. “I’m not going to sleep until you do.”

“You’ll just fall asleep in a few minutes, and then I’ll carry you to the bed.” He smirked knowingly at me.

“This is no memories Maka. You don’t know what she’ll do.” 

He was right. I fell asleep. 

When I woke up again, I was back in the bedroom, under the covers this time. I sat up looking for my crutches only to find Soul asleep at the foot of the bed, sitting on the floor, head against the wall. He wasn’t snoring this time; his mouth was closed. The dark circles no less prominent under his eyes. 

I found myself watching him; one of his hands was curled in his lap, against the same jeans which weren’t quite skinny, but weren’t quite not, that he wore yesterday; one knee bent, the other straight; his second hand flopped over on the floor like a dead fish; his eyes had a slight downturn to them, the corners near his nose just barely higher. Something most people would probably never notice. 

I leaned back against the pillow, willing to bet if I got up it would wake him up. Rolling over I thought I could fall back asleep, but I was wrong. Instead I found myself surveying the room; this room looked much more used than the one with the piano, but it also looked incredibly disused. There was a large dresser to the left by a window, picture frames littered across its surface, majority of them turned face down. In fact, the only photo in the room that wasn’t turned face down wasn’t even a photo just an empty frame. The glass inside it shattered. Like the piano keys, everything was covered in a layer of dust. This room like the other had dark blue walls, but unlike the other also had brick exposed behind the bed. I looked to the nightstand beside me, a photo was turned over there as well. I flipped it up, curious to see what was there.

It was a picture of me and Soul, nowhere in particular just sitting on a bench; I was laying down with my head in his lap reading a book. I flipped the frame back up. 

“Maka?”

I turned towards Soul; he was awake. 

“Hi.” I replied as he stood. “Why were you asleep on the floor?”

“No reason.”

“There’s obviously some reason.” I gave him a look. 

He didn’t deem the comment an answer, changing the subject instead. “Do you want to take a bath?”

His attempt at distraction worked, but only because I immediately shoved my foot in my mouth. “Are you calling me dirty?” 

He raised an eyebrow. Heat rose to my cheeks immediately. 

“No-” I started to edit my sentence, but he cut me off. 

“I wasn’t calling you clean.” He winked at me and then waltzed out of the room. 

For a moment I wished I was back in a coma. 

I got up, crutching to the bathroom where he’d already drawn a bath. He said multiple times he’d be just outside the door if I needed anything, unwilling to shut the door between us like I might drown. But I eventually got him to accept he wasn’t going to hand bath me, even if I had accidentally myself dirty, before shutting the door in his face. 

The bathroom was more spacious than it looked from the hall, giving me ample room to fumble around getting my clothes off. The bathroom was rather straight forward, it started with a sink and ended with the shower/bathtub combo and in-between was the toilet. The mirror behind the sink spanned the rest of the wall, giving me a fuller view of myself than I cared to have. 

The thinness I’d already noticed in my face and arms spanned the rest of my body, not a concerning thinness just the kind that would get knocked down easily. Which bothered me. The simple fact of which told me I probably wasn’t someone you wanted to mess with before I was in a coma; but now, now I looked like one of those models who refused to eat more than strawberry a day. I ran my hand down my ribs like an instrument, fingers gliding over the gauze covering my stitches as well, found myself debating how much I could eat without throwing it all back up afterwards. 

I didn’t look down to peel the gauze back, opting to look in the mirror instead- it made it feel less real. I wasn’t bleeding, at least not at the moment, but somehow the wound looked even larger know. The edges weren’t cut straight like a knife either. Where the edges were pulled together by the stitches were jagged outcroppings, leaving behind an odd mosaic of triangular scabs that looked like teeth. Like the scar had a mouth. The whole thing was almost S-shaped, curving beneath my breast like a snake before it slithered down my side, around my back. A far cry from the diagonal scar across Soul’s chest to say the least. 

But I guess the weapons had been different: a sword vs. a wolf. 

I turned away walking to the bathtub slowly, leaving the crutches by the sink. I didn’t want to hobble around forever. My legs would have to get with the program. 

If anything, the bath was far from relaxing, rather it just left me alone with my thoughts while I tried to wash six months of neglect from my hair. How do they bath you when you’re in a coma anyway? A blush crept up my face. Did Soul…?

At this point the world from my coma felt far away, the details starting to feel more surreal, more like- well a dream. The longer I was here the more grounded I was, the more I felt at home with him. The idea of going back to that place was no longer appealing. More than anything I wanted to remember. The memories I did have back felt more important than my whole life in the other reality. I wasn’t Megan. I was Maka. I guess that should’ve been obvious when I woke up here, but the question of insanity had pretty much held until today; waking up here a couple times in a row was all it took to cement the idea of reality. That and I was fairly certain my subconscious wasn’t capable of creating a world this complicated, or someone like Soul.

My coma dream hadn’t involved men turning their arms into scythes. 

Soul. I sank my head under the water, blowing a stream of bubbles to the surface that danced across the skin of my face. I ran my fingers through my hair roughly, attempting to get all the conditioner out in one go. There had to be some way I could get him to talk to me. Well, he was talking to me, but he’s not telling me the whole story about anything. You don’t get circles around your eyes that dark in just a couple days. 

I broke back through the waters’ surface, blinking back droplets from my eyes, making them feel dry. I glanced at my legs, and oh were they hairy. There had to be a razor in here somewhere, there was, but it was definitely a men’s razor- all the better to hack my hair back to an acceptable length. Women’s razors never really get the job done. I went in a little over zealous, nicking the skin beside my knee. Blood mixed with the water there running like a black tear down my leg. It was unsettling, part of me thought just that one drop would turn the whole tub black. But that wasn’t what caught my eye, when I nicked the skin just before the blood ran out, what looked like the tinniest amount of smoke, or maybe fog, twisted into the air like someone blew out the world’s smallest match. Gone so fast I wasn’t even sure I saw it. 

Insanity began to look like the more reasonable answer again. 

I finished shaving quickly, wanting to get out of the solitude of the bathroom and see someone else’s face. Particularly Soul’s, but he didn’t need to know that. I got out slowly, very slowly, making absolutely sure not to slip and fall as I went from sitting on the side of the tub to standing on a towel; thoroughly drying my feet before stepping on the only tiled surface in the entire house. I didn’t fall, but as I wrapped the towel around my body, I realized a whole other fun fact: I’d forgotten to bring clothes into the bathroom. Great. 

“Soul?” I peeked the bathroom door open just barely looking out of the crack, but he wasn’t there. I opened the door farther, stepping into the opening. “Soul?” I said a little louder. 

“I’m in here.” He sounded like he was in the bedroom, mine. 

“Uhm Soul?” I started to ask him to bring me clothes, but then I thought about him handling my underwear and couldn’t decide the lesser of two evils. There really wasn’t that big of a difference between a hospital gown and a towel. But the crutches were a no go if I wanted to keep the towel on. 

I stepped out into the hall, what was he doing anyway, and started walking to the bedroom with one hand on the wall like it might stop me from falling if my legs decided not to listen. 

“Hey.” I asked around the door. “I forgot to bring clothes into the bathroom. Where are my clothes exactly?”

I inched around the door frame only to catch him in the middle of cleaning. He tried to hide the duster behind his back. 

“Are you dusting?” 

Soul didn’t answer because he was staring at me in a way that told me yes, yes there was a difference between a towel and hospital gown. His eyes roamed my entire body slowly, before landing on my lips. I felt the moisture from my hair find its way down my cheek to the top of my lip, pooling there before it slid down the side onto the floor. His stare didn’t bother me, no it did quite the opposite. I shifted uncomfortably, trying to ignore the heat that built in my body. 

I took my freehand off the wall, pulling the towel closer around my body. “Are you going to answer any of my questions? Or do I need to hit you with something?” I deflected. 

He jerked his eyes away from me, staring at anything and everything but. 

“The dresser, most of your clothes are in the dresser.” He pointed mechanically to the other side of the bed, and then walked to the closet pulling out a hoodie and tossing it to me like he was afraid to walk any closer. 

To my credit I managed to catch it without dropping my towel. “Thanks.”

“No crutches?” He asked as I made my way past the bed to the dresser. 

It was either that or no towel. “I actually think I can walk without them.” I paused. “Carefully.” And not for long, but I’d made it this far.

“I’ll let you get changed.” He excused himself, shutting the door behind him. 

I opened the dresser expecting to find my underwear, but instead found his, which led to me slamming the top drawer shut quickly and opening the next, but not before I got an eye full of boxers. Why would his clothes be in here that doesn’t make any sense if it’s my room? Unless it wasn’t just my room. 

I opted not to think too hard on the subject, digging through the rest of the drawers to find some pants and underwear, throwing the athletic shorts and hoodie on without too much more thought on the subject. 

I headed back to the bathroom to return the towel and brush my hair. Stretching my legs felt good, not as unstable and weighted as they’d felt at the hospital just sore. I caught a glimpse of Soul in the other bedroom, probably dusting there too. Acting like he hadn’t just stared at me in a towel. 

I put my hair in pigtails; it just felt like the right thing to do. I’d forgotten all about the bandages Soul had set on the sink until I heard him knock on the half open bathroom door. 

“You can come in.” You already saw me in a towel. 

His hand slid along the side of the door pushing it the rest of the way open. He noticed the unused gauze on the counter. “You need to clean your stitches once a day.”

Right. “And I use hydrogen peroxide for that?” That was about the extent of first aid knowledge I ever needed while I was in a coma. 

“Just sit down, I’ll do it.” He motioned to the toilet. 

But Stein had told me not to let him see it. “No, I can do it. Just tell me what to do.”

“Maka I cleaned your stitches every day at the hospital.” He walked over to the sink filling it with warm water, mixing in some soap he’d set beside the gauze.  
Well, that’s not hydrogen peroxide. If he cleaned them in the hospital…why did Stein care? I sat down on the toilet; the lid was already down. “You know you haven’t changed clothes yet, maybe you should shower.”

“To use your words, I guess I am pretty dirty.” He didn’t even look away from the rag he was dipping in the sink water.

I lifted my leg off the toilet to kick him, but even with all the force I tried to put into it, it was more like a tap on the leg. 

“Did you just try to kick me? That’s not very cool Maka.” He laughed, pulling the rag out of the water. “Besides, it just felt like you poked me.”

“Guess I’ll just have to get something heavy to throw at you, like a book. Hey, want to bring me a book?” I smiled back at him. Enjoying how the expression lightened his face. 

“Now you’re just being mean.” He got on his knees in front of me; he was still within reach of the sink. “Hold your shirt up for me.”

I complied, pulling the corner of the white hoodie up to where it just covered my left breast. Any sign of the previous humor on his face was gone when he looked at the wound on my chest, the immediate shift of his facial expression had me kicking myself for not listening to Stein. 

He placed his left hand on my hip scooting me closer to him. He didn’t move his hand after, the tips of his fingers sending a constant stream of nerve signals across my skin- the neurons refusing to adapt to his touch. I tried not to let my mind wander.

I tried not to focus on it, how his thumb slid absentmindedly back and forth only exciting my nerves more. Exciting me more. 

His other hand dabbed the warm rag along the stitches with just enough force to wipe clear any residue there; I barely felt the pressure. Periodically he dipped the rag back into the sink. His left hand never left my hip like this was his one excuse to touch me, like he’d missed being able to. 

My breathing hitched as his thumb grazed the skin just below my breast. 

“Does that hurt?” He looked up at me only causing my breathing further irregularities. The red of his eyes shaded by his eyelashes doing unholy things to my thought process. 

“Just stung a little.” I lied. 

He let me. 

I had a feeling he knew damn well it didn’t hurt. 

He set the rag down, placing his right hand on my other hip, angling my body to where he could see the end of the wound, the portion that trailed just barely onto my back. I parted my lips just a little to hide the sound of my breathing. His right hand slid up my side before he picked up the rag again. His fingertips leaving a burning trail of nerve endings behind. 

He finished cleaning the skin around the stitches, taking his left hand off my hip as well, which was mildly disappointing as my mind had started to get other ideas of where his hands might go. He covered the wound with gauze before standing up and offering me a hand. 

I dropped my hoodie back down taking his hand, ignoring the part of me that wanted to rip my shirt off and see what he’d do, what he’d do to me. 

“Are you hungry? I can make you something.” He seemed to think about that statement. “Or actually we can order something.”

“There’s no food in the fridge is there.” I laughed mildly just a gust of air through my nose.

“Not exactly.” He pulled me up before abruptly letting go of my hand, running it through his hair instead, which didn’t look any cleaner than mine had. 

“Why don’t you take a shower and I’ll order food.” He looked like he was going to protest so I added. “While I may not remember who I am, I think I’m capable of calling a Chinese restaurant.”

A little light came back to his face as he smirked. “Fair enough. The phones by the fridge and the menu is on the fridge” 

I took my crutches from the sink, more for his peace of mind than my own, as I left the bathroom for the kitchen. He closed the door behind me. 

I leaned the crutches against the island before taking the phone off the wall. I wanted to stand on my own. There was in fact a menu from a Chinese restaurant taped on the fridge, so I dialed the number from it.

The number barely rang before the other end picked up. “Soul? Your back! How’s Maka doing?”

Was this the Chinese restaurant? I looked back at the number on the fridge. “Uhm, Hi. This is Maka.” 

“Maka!” The man seemed to turn his head from the phone, yelling to other people in the room. “You’re awake! That’s great news, we were getting worried. How do you feel? Ya’ll want the regular?”

“Good, it’s nice to be home.” I smiled as I said it. It was nice to be home. “The regular sounds good.” Because I didn’t remember what we normally ordered anyway.

“Great! We’re all glad to hear that. We’ll have your food right over and don’t worry about paying. This time it’s on us.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s no problem, we’re just glad Souls got you back.” He hung up the phone. 

I had two thoughts, the first, I really had no idea who that man was and the second, we clearly ordered in too often. 

I walked over to the couch, noticing the file still laying on the coffee table and not wanting to look at it, I walked into the room with the piano instead, sitting down on the piano bench. I had no idea how to play, the piano just felt comforting to me. There were some empty music sheets on the desk of the piano; I slid them all out. The one on the back had some notes scrawled on it, I had no idea how to read it, but that didn’t stop me from trying to find a correct note, tapping the keys randomly. 

I gave up that quest pretty quick, resorting to playing the Jaws theme on the deep end of the keys. It made me laugh, especially because Soul had shark teeth himself. Soul didn’t take very long in the bathroom or changing. He showed up in the doorway in another pair of not quite skinny jeans, this time black, and just a white t-shirt. His hair was still wet, but partially pulled back with a headband. 

“I tried to teach you to play once.” He said while leaning against the doorway. 

“Really?” I glanced back to the piano. 

“It was a bit of a lost cause.” When I looked back, he was smirking. “So, I wouldn’t expect to remember any songs.”

“Why was it a lost cause?” 

His smirk grew. “We got a little distracted.”

I should not have asked.

I was straddling Soul on the piano bench, hands working at pulling the shirt over his head.

“I thought you wanted to learn.” He smiled, as he refused to comply to me taking his shirt off.

So, I reverted to taking my own shirt off instead. That seemed to do the trick. 

The pain in my head flared with the blush on my face, as I turned quickly to the piano ready to change the subject. 

“Will you play?” I set my hands in my lap resisting the urge to rub my temples under my fingertips and watched him hesitate. 

“There’s so many memories…” He trailed off.

“You don’t want to trigger one.” It’s a little too late for that. 

“Not if it ends like it did last time.” He ran his hand through his hair, flinging water onto the floor, and almost knocking out his hair band. 

“What if you play something new?” I pointed to the half empty sheet music in front of me.

“That’s hardly a song.”

“Please.” I gave him the most innocent look I had, but I realized the please was all it took to convince him because he was already headed my way.

I scooted over so he could sit beside me. “I guess it wouldn’t be very cool to say no.”

I reached up to take the hair band the rest of the way out of his hair only to slid it back on in a better position, pulling some of his bangs free afterwards. My fingers gliding through his damp hair easily. He looked down at me, his eyes opened just a little wider. 

My blush returned, but I didn’t want to look away from him. “Sorry, it was falling out.”

His hand slid across my cheek as he leaned forward, I started to part my lips before he said. “I missed your pigtails.” 

Then his hand fell abruptly before he started to play the few lines of notes he’d written out. 

I suppose I wouldn’t know, but it wasn’t like anything I heard before. Much lighter than what he’d played the night before, his fingers never stretching to the deeper tones of the piano. But it wasn’t necessarily happy music either, more like an imp trying to trick you into following it into the woods, or a fae queen offering you fruit only to trap you in her world forever. 

He played through the page a couple times, taking it further each time, scrawling more notes onto his paper. It seemed to consume him, removing the wrinkles from everything he worried about on his face. I leaned my head on his shoulder and just listened to him work. 

“You should try writing something lighter.” I looked over at Soul from my position on the piano bench.

He gave me a curious look, a little like he was hurt.

“Not lighter like happy, something that’s still you, but experimenting in different notes, different keys.” 

“How would a lighter song not be happy?” It wasn’t an argumentative sentence, more like he was pondering out loud. 

“I have no idea, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” I stood up from the bench, kissing him on the cheek before announcing the food was here. 

I flinched against his shoulder a little and he stopped playing, it was only a flicker in my brain- nothing too painful, but a little worse than a moment before. 

“Why’d you stop?” I sat back up straight to look at him. “You did it.”

“Did what?”

“Wrote a lighter song that wasn’t happy.”

“You remembered something.” He frowned, wrinkles returning to his face.

“You could sound a little happier about it.” Irritation riled against my chest as I removed my head from his shoulder; I crossed my arms glaring at him. 

He stopped frowning, setting a hand on my check to smooth the wrinkles beside my eyes. “I just don’t want to put you through any more pain Maka.” He let out a breath.

“I don’t think we have a choice.”

He didn’t like that answer, but there was a knock at the door before he had a moment to reply. He stood up to go answer. 

“Wait.” I called. I reached my hand out and he helped me up. “They seemed really excited to hear I was awake. I want to say hi but-”

“But you don’t want them to know about your memories?” He just looked knowingly at me. He pulled me closer to his side, dipping his head to my ear as we walked. “If his hair is brown its Henry, if it’s dyed its Avery.” 

His breath tickled my ear. I was distracted when he opened the door, so Soul spoke first. “Thanks Henry. I think that was a new record on delivery time.” Soul took the bag with his spare hand. 

“I had to get over here to see Maka.” It was the voice from the phone. Henry was taller than I expected, taller than Soul. His brown hair was long, pulled back into a bun. 

“Are you sure we can’t pay you?” I asked.

“I won’t hear another word of it. You look great Maka.” He came in for a hug, and I felt Soul let go of my hand reluctantly. 

For a skinny guy, he gave quite the bear hug, it about knocked me over, Soul’s hand brushing against my back the moment I began to teeter. 

When he let go I asked. “What’ve you been doing the last six months?”

I hadn’t meant to be funny, but he thought I was hysterical, even got Soul laughing beside me. “Well I got a new boyfriend, so I was going to say not sleeping, but it looks like Soul’s been doing less sleeping than I have. What have you two been doing since you woke up?”

Soul made a sound like he was choking beside me. I couldn’t feel it, but I was sure my face was beat red. Henry only laughed. “You two are still shy as ever I see.”

“We can’t all have the complete lack of personal boundaries that you and BlackStar possess, or should I say don’t possess.” Soul said dryly only leading to Henry laughing more. 

Soul set his hand on the small of my back, ever concerned with my disuses of the crutches. 

“I’m going to let ya’ll eat, but you better come down to the restaurant sometime soon or Avery and the old man will be banging on your door.” He winked at us and didn’t wait for a reply before heading back down the hall. 

After Soul closed the door I said. “You really do look like you’re on Lord Death’s doorstep.”

He just gave me a look as we headed to the kitchen. I sat down on one of the bar stools by the kitchen island, waiting for him to unpack the food from the brown bag.  
“Why don’t you tell me something?”

He didn’t even look at me as he answered. “You already know the answer to that question.”

“No, I mean why don’t you tell me something that wouldn’t be connected to a memory I have.” I stared at him; he was focusing heavily on the food. “Like what you’ve been up to the past six months.”

His hands paused for just a moment too long before he placed a plate in front of me. “There was nothing especially interesting.”

I started to protest but he continued. “Wes had a big violin performance in the city.”

“Your brother?” I thought about it for a second. “Have I met him.”

Soul didn’t immediately answer, so I filled in the blank. “I’ll take that as a yes. Did you go.”

“I didn’t.” He started to eat. I did too, waiting for him to elaborate. 

“Go on.”

“I didn’t need to. He always performs beyond perfectly.” He seemed to ponder something as he twirled a noodle around his fork. He was standing opposite my seat at the island. “He did stop by the hospital though. He was the only person from my family who did.”

I had a feeling there was more to that statement than I knew but didn’t press it. 

“He offered to stay a few days, but he had other concerts, so I told him to go.”

“Have you talked to him since?”

“No.”

“Maybe you should call him?”

“Maybe.”

We finished eating in silence. Soul was putting everything away when there was another knock at the door. I headed over to open it, but before I could reach the handle the door flew open against the wall. 

“DON’T WORRY MAKA BLACKSTAR IS HERE!” He almost ran into me jumping into the room, grabbing my shoulders as he continued to shout. “I’ll get your memories back if it’s the last thing I do!” 

Soul started to say something from the kitchen, but it wasn’t audible over the sound of BlackStar’s yelling. “Remember when we fought the Kishin? Remember when I single handedly beat the kishin? Do you remember asking me to train you?”

“BlackStar two of those things didn’t even happen.” Tsubaki said calmly from the doorway. 

“Shh, Tsubaki she doesn’t know that.” He turned back to me. “Don’t listen to her! She just wasn’t there.”

A random montage of similar scenes of BlackStar rumbled through my brain, none of them telling me anything this display didn’t already show me. In the next moment Soul had me in his grasp instead of BlackStar’s. I imagined the look on his face wasn’t pleasant. 

“I’m sorry Soul; I tried to get BlackStar to calm down all the way over here.” Tsubaki stepped in front of BlackStar, blocking his immediate path from doing anything stupid. 

I looked up at Soul and his hands slid from my shoulders to my waist, drawing me back against him. I wrote it off as him keeping BlackStar from knocking me over, but my body didn’t write it off. 

“Come on Soul we’re going out!” BlackStar yelled. 

“I’m not going anywhere.” Soul said dismissively, pulling me just a fraction closer to him. I felt his chest against my back, his shoulders rising and falling with his breath. 

“You should go Soul.” I made eye contact with him trying to read his red eyes. They said no too. “Really, you deserve a break. Go have fun.” I really didn’t want him to leave if I was being selfish, but I wanted to ask Tsubaki something alone. 

“I’ll stay with Maka Soul, you don’t have to worry about her.” Tsubaki took my hand like she might lead me away, but Soul’s grip on my hips didn’t loosen. I squeezed Tsubaki’s hand once before pulling loose. 

I turned in Soul’s grip to face him, my hands against his chest. “I’ll still be here when you get back.” I pushed against his chest lightly like he might let me go.  
“Don’t make me drag you out of this apartment.” BlackStar warned. I honestly wondered who would win that fight.

Soul pulled me into a hug; I wrapped my arms around his waist as he buried his face in my hair. He let go too soon for me, but too long for the company in the room. He watched my face as he stepped away memorizing all the details. 

BlackStar slapped him on the back audibly. “I didn’t think you were this whipped buddy, come on you need a shot!”

BlackStar was out of the room in the next moment, claiming he was driving the motorcycle. I didn’t need my memories to know that wasn’t happening. 

“Go have fun.” I said again.

Tsubaki added in her same sweet voice. “I’ll call you if anything happens.”

“I won’t go far.” He replied before he followed after BlackStar.

“He never would’ve left if you hadn’t told him to.” Tsubaki said when she was sure Soul could no longer hear. 

It was funny, she looked exactly like my friend Rose, or who had been my friend Rose when I was in the coma dream. Just looking at her here was enough to bring back memories, movies and gossip, memories that involved Patty and Liz trying to do our hair and makeup. One particular time when Liz decided to pluck my eyebrows to Kid’s great displeasure. My head didn’t hurt at all. 

“Hi.” I smiled. It was nice to see a familiar face. “Sorry, it’s just nice, when I was asleep it was like a whole different world, but I had this friend named Rose there, and that friend was you.”

“It’s good to see you too Maka.” She hugged me.

Tsubaki put in some movie and slipped the Lykos file far from view. I couldn’t focus much on the movie, trying to decide how to convince Tsubaki to tell me what I wanted to know, and also wondering what Soul was doing.

“Hey, Tsubaki.”

“I can’t tell you anything you don’t remember. I promised Stein.” She said like she’d practiced it in a mirror before she came over.

“It’s not something I would remember.” I said.

She looked at me, pausing the movie she shifted her body toward mine; the tunic she was wearing sliding up her legs with the movement. “You can ask, but I’m not making any promises to answer.” 

“I want to know what Soul did these past sixth months.”

“I think you already know what he did.” She smiled softly at me, a reassuring, but sad tint to her face. 

I started fidgeting with my hands, scrapping my nails along my fingers. “Did he ever leave the hospital? There was dust everywhere here when we got here, and all the picture frames were turned over, and the bags under his eyes Tsubaki.” It all just flooded out.

“There are things I want to say to you that I can’t.” She paused. “But, I can answer your question if you want to hear.”

“I do.” I looked her in the eyes waiting for what I already knew she would say: that he didn’t leave my side, but what she said was even worst. 

“When he got you back to the hospital Kid and BlackStar had to physically restrain him while you were in surgery. He gave BlackStar a black eye trying to get lose.” She looked away from me. “He didn’t eat or drink anything for so long that Stein gave him an IV; it reached the point where Stein threatened to sedate him if he didn’t pull it together.”

“And he tried the best he could. It was honestly painful to watch Maka. He came back to this apartment once right after Stein threatened him just to get clothes to take with him, and BlackStar said he overturned every picture of you in the apartment. Soul sat by you at the hospital every day, he slept there, if you can call it sleeping. It was more like his body would finally force him to pass out, and then he would fight every second of it to wake back up. BlackStar and me both tried to get him out of that hospital. He wouldn’t budge.”

It felt like she punched me in the gut, even the idea of Soul hurting that much made me physically ill like I needed to throw up. And yet she continued. 

“I think the worst was when your soul’s fell out of sync. It didn’t happen immediately, it was a couple months in. He thought you died.”

She just looked at me; she wasn’t going to give me a deeper description of what happened there. “What do you mean our soul’s fell out of sync. I know with resonance your soul’s link up, but that’s different, that’s fighting.”

“Meister’s and partners can form tethers over time like a phoneline between two peoples’ souls. Me and BlackStar have one. I’m sorry I don’t think I should say more.”

“In a dream I had about what happened, I felt something, something like a pull in my chest telling me where to go to find Soul. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Tsubaki, how do I help him?” I felt something cool run down my cheek and I knew I was crying. “I try to comfort him, but I don’t know what to say and he can’t even talk to me because he’s afraid what the memories might do.”

She pulled me against her like a mother would their child. “Just be there Maka, he’s still waiting for you to disappear.” 

She turned the movie back on as I attempted to get my emotions back under control. I must’ve fallen asleep there, a deep, dreamless sleep.


	3. Tether

Surprisingly it wasn’t the sound of BlackStar’s voice that woke me up, rather it was the feel of being shifted—someone wrapping their arms around my waist to pull me back against their body. I knew it was Soul because his smell wrapped around me like another layer of skin, skin I forgot I was missing. A smell like damp woods, but with a small fire burning in the middle of it. Not a strong smell, just warm. 

“Soul.” I mumbled without opening my eyes. Sleep still feeling more important than coherency. I pressed my face farther against his chest fully prepared to fall back into the dreamless sleep I’d been in before, his nose pressing into my hair. 

I faintly registered him and Tsubaki saying something before I was brought back to the real world by the sound of BlackStar entering the apartment. He didn’t even say anything when he entered, he just wasn’t capable of walking quietly—at least not while drunk. It startled me, causing me to sit upright, or as upright as I could with Soul’s arms not giving an inch to allow me to move. 

I peeked over Soul’s shoulder at the apartment door where BlackStar was standing. 

“Maka!” He called for no apparent reason, staggering slightly as he came farther into the room. He looked towards the kitchen. “Do you have any food?”

He didn’t wait for a reply, making his way to the fridge, forgoing a plate or utensils as he dumped leftover Chinese food into his mouth like a starving man. 

“Help yourself.” I replied too late. 

Tsubaki laughed from the other side of the couch, mouthing an apology to me and Soul, not that we needed one. 

The cascades of sound from BlackStar rummaging through the kitchen became the background music to Soul staring at me, his eyelids drooping slightly, a lazy smile on his face. He’d lost his hair band at some point, his hair more unruly than normal. 

“What?” I picked my hands up to my hair, trying to decide if it was sticking up in some odd fashion. 

“You’re beautiful.” Was all he said, the leftover scent of beer and whiskey lingering in his breath. 

“And you’re drunk.” I laughed it off, attempting to scoot back to the middle of the couch, but Soul’s arms were like chains dragging me back against his chest. 

“I went a long time without holding you Maka.” I think I even smelt tequila this time, a stark tinge to the woodier scent of whiskey. He buried his face back against the top of my head before he continued, voice muffled against my hair. “I don’t intend to let you go.”

From my position against Soul I watched Tsubaki stand up from the couch, evidently deciding it was time to leave. Soul took a deep breath against my scalp, the warmth of it radiating across the skin there. His hands were resting just below my stomach, along the seam of my shorts, his thumb just barely grazing the bare skin beneath. 

I tried to ignore the sensation. 

I didn’t see BlackStar and Tsubaki leave, more so heard her say their goodbyes as they left the apartment with one final apology about BlackStar eating all our food. 

I tried to relax on the couch. Soul’s breathing getting deeper the longer we sat there. I wasn’t sure if he was even still awake, but I also wasn’t sure where we stood. Didn’t know where we were supposed to stand and that made me nervous. We were obviously close, but how close. We lived together, but so did every other weapon/meister pair at the DWMA from the sound of it, yet we weren’t students anymore.

How close did I want to be?

His arms relaxed, hands sliding to my sides, fingers trailing against the skin just above the seam of my pants as consequence. 

Pretty close. My breath caught. 

I sat up out of his grip, scooting closer to the center of the couch before my mind could delve too deep into the place I wasn’t ready for it to go. He was asleep, looking more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. 

My body reacted to him in ways I didn’t have the memory to back up. It left me uncertain. 

I felt it again. Not the pain in my head, but the mild tugging against my chest like something trying to link back together—a gear not quite in place with the rest, a tangle in a water hose. 

I tried to follow the pull, pull it tighter, keep the nagging feeling constant like it had been in my dream. But the tugging rebelled against trying to be controlled, scurrying away back into the woods like a deer. 

I leaned my head back against the couch annoyed, despondently staring out the skylight. 

“Soul come look.” I was laying on the floor of an empty apartment, this apartment. 

Soul looked at me questionably, like this was finally the moment when I lost my mind. 

“Soul come on.” I urged him, smacking my hand on the hard wood beside me. “Come lay down.”

He finally complied, walking over to my position to lay down beside me. 

“Look.” I pointed up through the skylight. “There’s nothing overhead, not a canopy or a building. There’s not even a billboard. Just the sky.”

“Maka the real estate agent is going to think we’re crazy.” He looked from the skylight to my face. “You know I could’ve seen this standing up too.”

“Shut up.” I shoved my shoulder into his. “Not to its full effect you couldn’t”

“And how often are you planning to have us lay on the floor?” He smirked at me. “I can think of far more comfortable places to lay.” His eyes lit mischievously. 

“Soul!” I sat up looking at the real estate agent, to her credit she was acting like she couldn’t hear a word we were saying from only a few feet away. 

Soul got up first, so that he could help me get up next. Keeping our hands intertwined as he went back to discussing other details about the apartment with the woman trying to sell it to us. 

My brain deemed that memory worthy of another headache, or whatever I should call it, the nice burning kind, leaving me to curl back forward sliding my head between my knees. I didn’t make any sound, but Soul still woke up like he could sense I was in pain.

“Maka?” Even drunk he was capable of worrying. 

I stood up, making the active decision to decide my head didn’t hurt that bad, it did, but no sense in giving whatever blood was in my veins the pleasure in knowing that. He grabbed my hand to keep me from walking away, I didn’t fight it, instead just using it to urge him to get up with me. “Come here.”

He complied, following me as I walked behind the couch only to make him lay on the floor. “What’re we doing here?” 

I watched him stare at me in my peripheral vision, but I just looked out the skylight. 

“I was right; you really can’t get the full effect standing up.” I pointed towards the distant constellations. “We’re even high enough above the lights to see the stars.”

He rolled himself over to prop himself up on one elbow, looking at me instead of the stars. “Maka.”

“Yeah.” I turned my head to look at him. 

“You were right.” He used his free hand to move some hair out of my face tucking it behind my ear. “We have to get your memories back.”

He was staring at my lips again, before he abruptly flipped back over onto his back. 

“Soul?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s our bedroom isn’t it, not just mine.” I didn’t turn to look at him.

“Yeah, it’s our room.” I could feel him staring at me, trying to decide what I was thinking. 

“Then let’s go to bed.” He wasn’t sleeping on the floor tonight. 

I wasn’t even sure what I was thinking. 

“Soul?” I found myself saying as I woke up. But he wasn’t there. Instead I heard the soft purrs of my cat walking up my body, knowing she was getting ready to get fed. “Medusa?” 

No. She leaned down to stretch; her tail flicking high in the air before she let out a high pitched meow, leaping off the bed. I sat up board straight in my bed and looked to the desk on my right, covered in MCAT test books. No. That wasn’t all a dream. 

I got out of bed as quickly as I could—there was no soreness in my legs. 

“Soul!” My breath stuttered in my throat like a dying flame. No. 

I ripped open my bedroom door like BlackStar and stormed through the short hallway to the stairs, half falling down them in my attempt to get to the kitchen. “Soul?”

I bent over, breath coming in shallow burst raging loudly in my ears. My heart burned in my chest like I was dying, like the valves were giving out against the pressure. Head swimming, I tried to count to ten. My mind told me to count to ten, to calm down, but I couldn’t even remember how to breath. “Soul.”

“How endearing.” A feline voice drawled across the room. 

I looked up, trying to stand back straight. 

“You really love him don’t you.” The woman who spoke was sitting with her legs crossed on the gray-brown sofa in my living room. Her hair pitch black, but at her part was a single silver streak coming down behind her ear. 

“Was that all a dream?” She winked at me, her golden iris disappearing for a moment. “Or is this just a dream?”

She raised a hand in the air, the black sleeve of her shirt too tight to fall back. She twirled her fingers like she was stirring tea in a glass, tendrils of smoke leaking towards the floor like tentacles searching for water. Where the smoke pooled along the floor a face appeared, two more golden irises forming in the wisp. A black wolf stepped out of the ground, smoke pouring from his body as he moved. 

He paced between me and her, eyes watching mine. My breath a forgotten thing of the past. 

“Lykos.” I said.

“Oh, very good.” Her voice was seductive, honey drooling off a knife. 

“Would you prefer this form?” For a moment smoke swirled around her like her own tornado before it dispersed, leaving behind only a little red demon. 

When it spoke it was still her voice. “You didn’t think my darling sister came up with the idea for weaponized blood all on her own, did you?”

Then the little demon’s voice took hold rattling out. “No, she stole it from me.” Her voice took an edge. In the next moment she was back in her body, her red pants tighter than her shirt, black boots trailing all the way up her thighs. 

“No, matter. I perfected it.” Her eyes trailed the length of my body. “And she’s dead now. I suppose I have you to thank for that.”

The wolf continued its pacing, eyes never leaving mine. 

“Why are you here?” I asked, voice holding firm—at least for now.

“Who me?” She smiled. “I just thought I’d check in on my favorite sister killer.”

“What do you want with me?”

“Dear I don’t want anything from you. The question is what do you want from me? You want your memories back, don’t you?” Her eyes narrowed. She held her hand up again, this time the smoke pooling like an orb in her palm. 

And in that orb of smoke I saw myself sitting in class next to Soul, then I was training, then I was reading a book, small moments of my life flashing across the surface of the smoke like a movie. 

The wolf stopped pacing. 

“But Lykos, you ask, how can I possibly get my memories back if I can’t even resonate souls with Soul?” She took a step closer. “Go ahead, ask.”

“How do I get them back?”

“Simple.” She snapped her fingers. “Come and take them.”

At the sound of her fingers snapping, the wolf leapt for my throat. 

“Maka.” There was a hand on my shoulder, shaking it hard. “Maka, wake up.”

My eyes snapped open; Soul was leaning over me, a mildly panicked tint to his face. I’d probably been screaming. 

“Maka?”

“Soul.” I pushed his hand off me getting up from the bed, I walked into the kitchen.

“Maka where’re you going? What just happened.” I heard his footfall behind me. 

I started opening random drawers, looking for something anything sharp. I found it, a knife. I turned back towards Soul not looking at him, just at the hand I had angled under the blade. 

“Hey, Maka. Hand me the knife.” His tone changed abruptly, like he was trying to talk someone off a ledge. I guess he was.

I looked up at him, at his eyes—his wide, wide eyes. 

“No. Soul, look.” I demanded drawing the knife across the palm of my hand, leaving a deep stinging trail behind. 

He came closer to me, grabbing my wrist firmly in both hands. I dropped the knife. It clattered loudly against the silence. 

He was still staring at my face. “Soul.” I tried to pull my hands away. “Look.”

He didn’t let go of my wrist, but he looked down, where the blood was pooling on the palm of my hand was black, it overran my palm dripping down onto the floor. But that wasn’t the only thing coming out of the cut, as the blood dripped towards the ground so did tendrils of smoke twirl upwards in the air like ghost. 

“It’s not black blood Soul, it’s something else.” Something worst. 

“How?” Was all he said, so I told him every detail of my dream.

When I finished he was still gripping my wrist, the blood starting to dry on the edges of my palm. I pulled back against his grip lightly, asking for him to let go. 

“You’re not going to cut yourself again?”

“No.” 

He let go of my wrist, but only to drawl me against his body firmly, his arms wrapping around my back protectively. I hugged him back, forgetting about the blood on my hand as I entangled my arms around his waist, pressing my face into the shirt covering his chest just letting the smell of him wash over me. I wanted to remember. 

His chin was resting on my head as he spoke. “We need to go talk to Stein.”

“And Kid too.” I took a steadying breath. “We have to find her.”

His grip tightened around me. “It can wait until after breakfast.”

“Hey Soul.” I pushed back against his grip so that I could look at his face. “Aren’t you hungover?” I’d forgotten all about last night after my dream.

Soul let go, leaning back against the island behind him. My hands were still on his chest as it rumbled with his laughter. “I might’ve been, before you scared the living hell out of me screaming in your sleep, before walking into the kitchen like a zombie to slice your hand open.”

He apparently reminded himself that I was bleeding, having forgotten in the moment before. As well I pulled my hand back off his shirt, he looked down. 

“Sorry.” I said. 

“It’s just a shirt.” He took my hand gently, turning it over. “Was it really necessary to cut so deep.” 

“I wanted to make sure I was awake, here.” I didn’t like waking up without you. It scared me. I didn’t say it, but I still blushed. 

“What’re you thinking?” His free hand slid across my side resting on my hip, he pulled me closer to him. His eyes were on my lips. 

I ran my tongue across my lower lip as I spoke. “In my dream I thought I woke up back where I was in a coma. I thought that that had been real, and that this had been fake.” It scared me. 

“Does this feel fake?” His hand slid up my arm slowly, lazily, leaving a trail of electricity to stagger about in its wake. His fingers continued their path to my neck, resting there. 

“No.” No, that feels very real. I licked my lips again nervously, distractingly. “Soul.”

“Mmmh.” His eyes had followed the movement of my tongue. 

“It really scared me, waking up there without you.” 

Apparently, that was the end of his self-control because his eyes snapped to mine with a visible level of desire. The hand on my hip pulled me toward him, and then his lips were on mine and I wasn’t complaining. 

His lips parted mine with ease, his teeth just barely grazing my lower lip. He continued softly, allowing me to relearn, remember the feel of his lips on mine. My hands went to his neck, greedily pulling him closer to me before my fingers ran into his hair, pulling him closer yet. His hands left my hip—my neck; trusting me to keep our heads firmly together as his left hand found purchase on my thigh, hiking it up against his hip pulling us closer still, allowing me to feel the bulge growing there. His right hand slipped under the back of my shirt, fingers running against the small of my back. Everything was warm, hot. 

Flashes of similar moments, more lips and desires. 

I opened my mouth further, sliding my tongue against his lip before slipping it in further. And then he turned, picking me up by my thighs to set me up on the island counter. I wrapped my legs around him on instinct, my breathing a ragged mess, not that he would ever notice over his own breathing. I wanted him closer. His hands found their way up my stomach to my chest, somehow leaving hot trails against my already warm skin. There was no bra there to stop him as his thumbs slid over my nipples. I moaned. And then his mouth was on my neck, teeth worrying the skin there as he sucked. 

I drug my nails down his back slow, hard. His shirt was in the way, so I ripped it off, his hands momentarily released my breast to comply. He pushed against me, the bulge in his pants harder. 

Then one memory took hold.

“Soul.” I gasped, moaning. 

“Fuck, Maka.” He bit my neck, pushing into me slowly. One of his hands pinning mine above my head, the odd texture of a veil pressing into the skin there. 

A white dress was discarded on the floor. 

I pressed a hand to my head although I didn’t flinch away from it, the pain was still there. Soul stopped, his hand finding my cheek instead. “Maka are you okay?”  
“I’m fine, I just, I remembered something.”

He pulled my hand back, kissing my forehead softly. 

I leaned forward resting my head on his shoulder, unwrapping my legs from around him. The previous moment forgotten. The stabbing pain in my head throbbing with each beat of my over excited heart. He ran a hand through my hair.

“What did you remember?” He asked.

I was glad he couldn’t see my face because I was blushing. “Something similar.”

He chuckled, a deep sound. “Similar?” He turned his head to whisper in my ear. “So, not quite the same?” His hand trailed down my spine.

I shivered. 

I leaned back, looking at his face. The bags around his eyes, they were lighter today, almost gone like he’d actually slept last night. 

“Soul.” A put a hand on his face, running my thumb beneath his eye. “I know how I feel about you, but I don’t know why. I always want to touch you. When you’re not with me I have a sense of unease in my chest like a fear I might not see you again.” I brought my other hand to his face. “But I don’t know why, my mind can’t justify the feelings.”

My hands slid from his face to my lap. 

“I don’t know what to do about it.” I was confused.

“Maka.” Soul’s hand landed on my neck pulling my face back towards his so he could kiss me again. Once, twice, he pulled back. “I’m yours. Whatever part of me you want, it’s yours. It’s up to you, all of it. But no matter what you want, I’m not going anywhere.” He kissed my forehead again, pulling me off the counter. 

The bulge in his pants still prominent. 

“I can’t pick up where we left off when I don’t know where that was.” Even if I want to. 

“Then we’ll start at the beginning.” He didn’t seem to mind, he just smiled at me. 

But my eyes fell to his scar, it was longer than I’d imagined it would be—traveling all the way from his left shoulder almost to his right hip. I ran my hand along the pink skin that puckered there, even the stitches had left imprints down his chest. I rested my hand against the middle of it looking back up at him, the gesture feeling familiar as I spoke. 

“Until I remember.” 

I felt it again, the pulling: a tether in my chest linking me to him, our souls trying to find one another again, that’s what it was. The tugging wavered like someone was placing their hand on an instrument to stop the vibration, to stop the sound. But it held together.

“Maka.” Soul looked at me, the wrinkles on his forehead gone. 

“I know. I feel it too.” 

Soul excused himself to take a shower after the moment in the kitchen; and I tried not to imagine what else might be happening in the bathroom while I went to change clothes. Further investigation into our bedroom told me I wore a lot of skirts, something I suppose shouldn’t surprise me considering I hadn’t had one memory come back to me where I wasn’t wearing one, well at least not in the memories when I was wearing clothes. I shoved that thought aside too, pulling on my light blue skirt quickly before putting on my white blouse. 

Although the connection wasn’t airtight, I could still feel Soul’s soul from the bathroom, its presence becoming a comforting feeling in my chest. It made me smile. The bedroom wasn’t dusty anymore, not after Soul’s poorly hidden cleaning spree, but all the picture frames were still flipped over, aside from the one on the nightstand. 

There were three on top of the dresser, the empty one with the broken glass and another two. I decided to set them upright as well. I grabbed the first one, the cool metal of the gold frame numbing the tips of my fingers as I turned it up right. It was another photo of me and Soul, Soul was in a tux in this photo and he looked good. We were standing together on a balcony, but the photo was taken from behind like we were unaware of it even happening. My dress was magenta. 

“Soul come dance with me, it’s a good way to match wavelengths you know.” I said looking over at Soul.

“Dancing at parties like this is annoying.” He replied looking back towards the room.

“Come on you’re a better dancer than me, I’ll let you lead.” I set the plate of food in my hands down on the railing. There was seafood there, something I’d only gotten for Soul. 

Before Soul could reply my father came out onto the balcony. “Soul.” He said before turning to me. “May I have this dance with my daughter.”

“No.” I said turning away, looking back over the railing.

“Oh come on Maka, dance with your father if only for the sake of father daughter bonding.” 

“Soul.” I turned ready to hit him, but Spirit grabbed my arm, dragging me back towards the dance floor, away from Soul. “Don’t let anyone eat my food!” Were the last words I could get out. 

Pain rallied in my head once more, fire trying to reach that same level of intensity it had the first time but failing. I released the photo, burrowing the end of my palm across my forehead to try and massage the feeling away. It didn’t help, so I just focused on the feeling of Soul’s soul instead as I went to turn the next picture frame up. This one was just a cat, a black cat with a witch’s hat. Blair. My brain gave me a name, but no context. 

I heard Soul walk into the room behind me. “Hey.” 

“Where is Blair?” I found myself asking as I turned to see Soul had walked in the room in only a towel, hanging low across his hips. Maybe I didn’t want to start at the beginning.

If he saw me stare, he didn’t say anything walking over to into the closet instead, leaving the door cracked behind him. “Kid sent her to ask around about Lykos shortly before you woke up. She hasn’t been back yet.”

I was tempted to watch him change through the crack he left open, but I decided against it, making myself busy staring at the picture frames instead. “Oh. Has she found anything?”

“I haven’t heard anything from Kid, but I also haven’t been around to.” His voice sounded closer, so I decided it was safe to turn back around. He was wearing looser jeans this time, with an orange long-sleeved shirt, the words PIANOMAN in bold across the chest. 

He leaned against the bed post closest to me. 

“Where did this picture go?” I asked pointing to the broken frame. 

“Nowhere, just doesn’t have one.” He took his hands out of his pockets crossing his arms across his chest. 

“We just have a broken frame sitting here?” I find that hard to believe. 

Soul was saved from replying by a knock at the front door, which he turned to answer without a second’s hesitation. I followed him, for the first time I noticed it wasn’t a challenge to walk in this body, like my soul had settled here. 

It was Liz and Patty at the door, wearing matching tank tops and shorts. 

“Hi.” Liz said. “Sorry to stop by unannounced, Kid wanted us to bring ya’ll some food.”

“Kid wouldn’t come because of the stairs.” Patty chimed in. “Also, we have news about-”

Liz spoke over her sister. “Patty, Soul might want to hear that from Kid.”

“But Kid said to tell-” Patty continued anyway before Soul spoke over them. 

“It’s okay. Maka knows about Lykos.”

How he deciphered what they were talking about I’ll never know. 

They came into the apartment, setting a few pans of food on the counter—a mixture of leftovers from Kid’s mansion; I made myself a plate sitting down. 

“We know where Lykos is.” Liz said suddenly with no prompting. 

“How did you find her?” Soul stepped closer to Liz. “It took us months before.”

“It wasn’t hard.” Patty chimed again. “She came right up to Blair.”

“When?” I asked.

“Early today.” Liz said. 

After my dream, after she told me to come and get them, my memories. Soul looked at me. I had a feeling he was thinking the same thing. 

“What did she say?” Soul asked. 

“Blair contacted Kid this morning and said Lykos just waltzed right up to her. Said she knew Blair was looking for her and that she didn’t need too. Said she was still in the last place Soul and Maka found her, and that she would be there, waiting.” Liz shivered visibly. “She gives me the creeps.”

“No need to be scared Liz. Maka’s the only one that can find her anyway.” Patty announced, patting Liz on the back. 

“What do you mean?” Soul asked.

“Lykos said Maka was the only one who could find her, told us not to bother without her.” Patty continued. 

“Anyway, Kid wants to meet with you Soul, and Maka but he said to leave that decision up to you.” Liz said. 

I couldn’t decide if I should be offended by that. 

“We have something we need to tell him too.” Soul said. “The black blood that’s in Maka, it’s not just black blood, it’s something else. Lykos came to Maka last night in a dream, said she perfected Medusa’s experiment.”

“She also said if I wanted my memories to come take them.” I added. “It was a challenge.”

Soul didn’t look comfortable with that statement; he came and stood behind me at the kitchen island. 

“But how can Maka fight if she doesn’t remember anything?” Patty asked. Liz shot her a look. 

“She’s right.” I almost died last time we fought, and I’d had my memories then, knew how to fight. “I can’t fight like this.”

Soul put a hand on my waist, leaning down to my ear like he was going to say something, but then he couldn’t decide on the words before Liz spoke again—leaving just his breath trailing against my ear. 

“He’s not going to let ya’ll go alone again.” Liz added. “We have to head back out, Kid wants us to get Stein too.”

“We’ll see you in the Death Room Maka?” Patty asked.

Soul’s hand fell from my waist as I said. “Yes. I’ll be there.”

Liz and Patty left shortly after that, both hugging me on their way out saying they were glad I was awake. Soul was putting the rest of the food up in the kitchen when I walked back in. 

“Soul what happened the last time we fought her?” I asked. “And don’t tell me you can’t tell me. Stein didn’t know what the black blood was doing, but he also didn’t know it wasn’t Medusa’s black blood. If Lykos wanted to kill me with it, she would have already. She wants me to find her again.” I caught myself rambling and stopped. 

“We got split up.” Soul closed the refrigerator. 

I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He didn’t even turn around. 

“What do you mean?”

“She can make you see things that aren’t there. She showed me you in the woods. I thought I was following you.” Soul said quietly. 

“But before that, how did we get split up?”

“I don’t know. I woke up and you weren’t there. We’d been tracking her down, talking to locals in the area and we pinpointed her to the woods, but it was already dark, so we set up camp nearby.” He paused. “I woke up and you were gone.”

“Why would I have gone into the woods without you?” Why did I leave him?

“I don’t know, I never got the chance to ask you.” Soul turned back around, leaning back against the fridge looking at me. 

I stayed by the front door. “Why didn’t she kill us?”

“I don’t know.” 

“She has to have something else planned.” I looked towards the coffee table where her file sat. “That’s why you kept rereading the file.”

He nodded. “I was hoping you figured something out before we left, but it didn’t tell me anything. Not even a hint of how to wake you up.”

“I could hear you, you know. I always heard you calling my name; it always sounded like it was coming from underwater. I tried to find it for a long time, but I guess Lykos got tired of me looking because a doctor told me I was hallucinating, and then I stopped trying. I think that’s when our souls fell out of sync, when I stopped looking for you.” I looked at Soul. “I’m sorry I stopped looking.”

“You didn’t know Maka.”

“But I can see what it did to you.”

“Did Tsubaki say something to you?” 

“Nothing I didn’t ask for.” I leaned my head back against the front door, looking at the ceiling. “I should’ve known. I should’ve known it wasn’t real.”

“And I should’ve known it wasn’t you that I was following into the woods, but I didn’t.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“Like hell it isn’t Maka. But if it’s not my fault, it sure as hell isn’t yours.” His voice raised. 

“You’re not the reason I got hurt Soul.” I raised my voice as well, matching his. 

“If I’m not than who is Maka? It’s the weapons job to protect their meister, not the other way around. It was my job.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

“And you did?” He yelled. 

“I don’t know.” I looked back at him. “I don’t remember.” I spoke quietly.

Soul took a deep breath before walking over to me, pulling me off the front door and against his body. He hugged me quietly for a moment. “Maka you might not remember this, but I don’t trust most people. But you, I trust you with my life.”

“What if I did something to betray that trust?” I said into his chest. 

Soul laughed out a single breath before responding. “Maka that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Soul I’m serious, what if I’m the reason all this happened?” My hands curled into fist against his chest, knotting his shirt in my palms. 

“You’re not.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re blaming yourself.”

“She tricked us both Maka, it won’t happen again.” He pulled back from me to look at my face. “But don’t doubt who you are because of it.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just slid my hands up to his neck, pulling his face down to mine. I kissed him softly, barely parting his lips and then again deeper. 

“We need to go talk to Kid.” I said after. “But Soul, you didn’t hurt me—you haven’t hurt me. I know that’s true.” 

He didn’t respond just pulled me back against his chest, his nose pressing into my hair.


	4. Humor Me

By the time we got to the Death Room Stein was already there, so were Tsubaki and Blackstar, along with Kid and his partners. Part of me was surprised Spirit wasn’t there as well; maybe he was sulking from me not going home with him.

“Liz said you had some information for me?” Kid said upon us entering the room. 

I let Soul answer. “What’s keeping Maka from her memories, and what had been keeping her in the coma wasn’t just black blood, Lykos told Maka that she perfected it.”

“She told Maka?” 

“I had a dream, or it was more like she came for an unwelcome visit while I was asleep.” I answered. 

“Maka showed me; when she bleeds it’s not just the blood that comes out, but smoke too.” 

“Smoke?” Stein asked. “I’d like to see that.”

Soul stepped partially in front of me like Stein was going to come at me with a knife. 

“Soul it’s fine just show them.”

“You haven’t had enough of stabbing yourself today?” He retorted. 

I hardly stabbed myself, more like aggressively cut. I just rolled my eyes at him. He’d already wrapped my hand up before we left like a nurse.

I held my non-bandaged hand out to him, and he glared at me as his finger turned into a little scythe, giving the back of my hand no more than a paper cut, but it was enough for a visible tendril of smoke to curl up into the air. 

Stein shifted his glasses. 

“Stein?” Kid said. 

“Medusa was able to jump her soul between bodies. The smoke resembles the magic she used.” Stein stopped talking before realizing nobody followed what he was saying. 

He continued. “I think the smoke is a remnant of Lykos’ magic, like a tether between Maka and the witch’s soul. She didn’t transport her soul into Maka’s body like Medusa would have; rather, she created a leash of sorts.”

“How do you know that?” Soul asked looking thoroughly displeased with the information.

“I don’t; it’s just a hypothesis. But, it’s likely how she expects Maka to find her.” Stein replied. 

“And Liz said Lykos told you to come and get your memories, am I right?” Kid turned his attention to me.

“Yes.” I said.

Soul was still partially standing in front of me. Stein was off to the side rotating the screw in his head; Tsubaki and BlackStar standing silently by Liz and Patty. Kid was in the center of the room. 

“Maka I know you’re a bit out of sorts, but you’re going to have to go to find Lykos.” Kid was watching Soul as he spoke. 

I put a hand on the back of Soul’s arm, my fingers resting against his shirt sleeve. “I know.” 

“Of course, you won’t be going alone. It goes without saying that Soul will be with you, but Tsubaki and BlackStar will be going as well. I would come as well, but I’m afraid there’s something I have to attend to with the witches. I have to weed out any of Lykos’ supporters, if there are any, they’re in violation of the treaty we forged. Stein will stay here in case this is all an elaborate ruse to draw us away from the DWMA.” Kid left nothing up for debate. 

“Wow Kid, you thought of everything didn’t you?” Patty chimed bouncing over to Kid to pat him on the back. 

“Kid, we need time. Maka can barely walk much less fight Lykos.” Soul said. 

“HA HA HA! Lykos won’t have any time to get to Maka, she’ll have me to deal with first. I’m such a big star she won’t come anywhere near you small fries!” BlackStar boasted loudly. 

Tsubaki shushed him. 

“You have three weeks to prepare starting tomorrow.” Kid amended. “I never intended for you to leave right away. However, I will likely leave ahead of that time to meet with Blair.” 

Soul nodded, my hand still against the back of his arm. 

“And Maka, I’m glad you’re awake. I’m sorry to make you do this so soon.” Kid walked over to me and Soul as he spoke. 

“She didn’t leave us any choice.” I said. 

“Maka, if you have a moment, I would like to take a sample of blood back at the hospital.” Stein said. 

I laughed stepping to the side of Soul letting my hand drop. “Looks like you’ll be seeing even more of my blood today.” I glanced sideways at him, he was less than amused, his mouth down-turned further than usual. 

“Was that all Kid?” Soul asked. 

“Yes, you can go. Good luck.” Kid walked back to Liz and Patty.

I knew Soul wasn’t going to say anything, but I also knew the new deadline was bothering him. Knowing we’d be back there soon. 

He didn’t say anything as we left the Death Room, leading the way to the hospital in silence. I didn’t say anything either. The link between our soul’s felt like it wanted to say something, but every time it tried the connection was interrupted. What by, I wasn’t sure. Part of me wondered if it was Soul.

Soul got on his motorcycle, waiting for me to get on too. I climbed behind him, not bothering to overthink securing my arms around his waist. Used the chance to lean against him, my arms tightening around his waist as I pressed against his back, hiding my face from the wind. The hospital wasn’t far from the school, we might as well have walked, but I don’t think Soul was thinking that far ahead. He wasn’t thinking past whatever was worrying him, keeping him silent.

After he got off, he offered me a hand. I took it. 

We walked into the hospital together, the nurse at the front desk immediately waving us back to Steins room, or the room Stein was in. 

“Maka, you made it. Come sit here.” He pointed to a chair. 

I sat down, waiting for him to walk over. Soul stood by the door. His silence was starting to worry me—making all our actions feel mechanical. 

Stein came over with two intimidating looking syringes. I set my arm out flat on the arm of the chair, looking away towards the wall as cool gauze cleaned my inner arm. There wasn’t anything to look at on the wall, nothing distracting. I tried to focus on Soul’s soul instead, but that just got me worrying about his silence again. 

Before I even realized the needle was in my arm, Stein was done with the first syringe. Maybe worrying was a good distraction. I felt him slip the second needle into my arm and tried my best not to show any discomfort, but I felt the grimace on my face.

Stein finished putting the second syringe on a tray with the first, putting gauze against my inner elbow and telling me to hold it while he wrapped a bandage to hold the gauze in place without my help. 

“Before you go, I thought I should mention. The black blood spread between you two when you resonated souls before, I don’t see why this version would be any different. I also don’t know what that will do to Soul, it may not do anything at all, or it could cause similar effects in him. I just thought I should warn you both.” Stein said as he stood up. 

I didn’t know what to think about that. Didn’t quite understand the reference, it probably meant more to Soul than it did to me. 

“Do you still think we can resonant?” Soul asked from the door. 

“Not if you keep asking questions like that.” Stein said, a glare of light running across his glasses. 

I looked at Soul, but he wasn’t looking at me. Was that what he was so worried about?

We went back to the apartment after that. More of the day had past than I realized; the sun going down as we got off the motorcycle. At this point Soul’s silence felt louder than BlackStar’s inside voice. 

“Soul what’re you thinking?” I caved. 

“Are you hungry? Let’s walk over to Death City Wok, the Chinese restaurant. Avery and the old man want to see you anyway.”

“You’re thinking about food?” I asked incredulous. 

“I have an idea, humor me.” He offered his hand to me, intertwining our fingers as he stared off leading me to the Chinese restaurant. 

“What is the old man’s name anyway?” I decided to go along with it.

“BoJing, I’ve never heard anyone actually call him that though.”

“Soul do you not think we can resonate?” I couldn’t help myself from asking. 

“We’re not talking about that tonight.” He paused on the sidewalk turning towards me with a smirk. “Tonight, we’re going on a date, friend date, date date-” He paused to wink obnoxiously. “Your call. But we’re not talking about Lykos, or fighting, or anything outside of us.”

“Then it’s a date.” I said ambiguously, not specifying which kind, but I smiled at him feeling my eyes crinkle with the gesture. 

The Chinese restaurant was close, only a few blocks down from where our apartment was, no wonder we were regulars here. 

“Do you mind waiting here for a minute?” Soul asked, nervously ruffling the back of his hair with his hand.

“Outside?”

“Yeah. Just for a minute.”

“What’re you going to do?”

Soul smirked at me, eyes squinting mischievously. “Don’t worry about it.”

He walked to the door after that, giving me a look that said stay put as he opened the door to walk inside. I couldn’t actually spy in to see what he was doing, there were no windows on the front of the building other than the one small one above the door, and I wasn’t tall enough to reach it. 

But, that’s when I saw it. 

Just out of the corner of my eye, a twist of smoke curling across the wall of an alley across the street. My blood hummed, whispering for me to follow. Whether it was my own instinct or the black bloods’ I wasn’t sure. I stepped into the street walking towards the alley anyway, then onto the sidewalk; I reached the corner of the alley and my fingertips scrapped against the edge of the brick as I peeked around the corner. 

I didn’t see anything. Only an alleyway that ended in a tall wooden fence. The ground was moist, but there was nothing on it. No wolf or witch was standing there. The fence cast a shadow of itself across the ground, concealing the ground in front of it in dark inky shadows. I released my hand from the corner wall, stepping into the alley almost against my own will, my blood still humming it’s siren call in my ears.

My shoes making louder sounds smacking against the water residue there. Two golden eyes peered at me from the shadows beneath the fence. 

“Maka?” I felt a surge of panic that wasn’t my own causing me to turn my head to the sound of Soul’s voice. 

And just like that the humming was gone, my blood still. 

When I turned back around the eyes were gone, sunken back into the shadows from where they came. 

“Maka?” Soul yelled again, louder this time. 

“Soul.” I answered walking back out of the alley. He saw me, relief flooding his face as he jogged across the road. “Sorry, I thought I saw something.”

“Like what?” His eyes were running over my body quickly, not with desire, but with the intent of checking for any injuries. He was such a worry-wart. 

I faked a smile. “A cat, I thought I saw a cat.” 

“I leave for one minute and you’re letting cats lure you into alleyways, no wonder your father is such a basket case.” Soul offered me his hand. 

Something like that. I just smiled sheepishly at him. Was Lykos watching me, why? 

“I thought this was a date, should you really already be insulting me? We haven’t even eaten yet.” I took his hand, starting to walk back across the street. 

“Just wait until you see the amount of manners I eat with, then it’ll really be a date.” He winked at me. “The Evans would be disappointed.”

He let go of my hand at the door, opening it for me so I walked in ahead of him. The Chinese restaurant was small, an array of two people tables spaced in the small area, a counter in the back with a menu above it, the kitchen space behind blocked off by a thick black curtain. To the right of the counter was a small hallway with a black door at the back. 

“Ah yes, Eater reservation for two?” Henry stood to the left of the door where we walked in. He bowed slightly like we’d just entered an overpriced steakhouse. 

“Yes.” Soul said from behind me sounding like he was trying his best not to laugh.

Henry didn’t break his façade. “Very well, right this way sir.” 

Henry didn’t lead us to any of the tables in the room, instead he led us to the hallway on the right and through the black door which led back outside. 

It was a small courtyard, the entire thing covered in blue-gray steppingstones, grass peeking up in-between them shyly. There were three tables out, although two were set aside, leaving just the one in the center of the little courtyard. Unlike the tables inside these were made of metal, delicate patterns creating the surface. 

Henry even pulled my seat out for me, still perfectly in character, not at all like the man who delivered us Chinese the other day, leaving me wondering what Soul had done while I was outside letting a witch lure me into an alley. 

I sat down the red cushion on the metal chair proving to be surprisingly comfortable. I took in the rest of the courtyard, it was surrounded by a tall, light caramel privacy fence like the one that had been in the alley. But the wooden fence railings didn’t appear to cast shadows here, as strands of lights were running across the top of them. Someone had even lit a candle on the center of our little table, the wax drooling down the sides slowly. 

“Here are your menus. I’ll be back shortly to take your orders.” Henry bowed again, backing away from the table. He almost made it back inside before he started laughing, almost.

“What did you do?” I asked Soul as soon as the door closed behind Henry.

“I’m an innocent man.” Soul said, face tightening in an attempt to keep in a smile.

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“I just asked for a favor is all, I told them your memories had been a little foggy since you woke up and that I wanted to take you on a date.” Soul looked down at the menu, flipping it over once before setting it aside. “Do you know what you want?”

I glanced down at the menu. “Honestly no, just order whatever we had at the apartment, that was good.”

“The regular it is.” He laughed. “Tonight, I’m an open book, whatever you want to ask me, do it. I think you’re right, if Lykos wanted to kill you she already would’ve.” He spoke with his hands fanning them out in front of him, spreading them apart. 

“What’s your last name?” I asked without missing a beat. 

“Technically it’s Evans; I changed it to Eater after I came to the DWMA to be a demon weapon.” He put his hands in his lap. 

“Why?”

“My family is famous. It’s not really my style.”

“For music?”

“Yes, I was a concert pianist before I met you.”

“But you never play for anyone, even when we met you were off on your own playing, why?”

“My parents didn’t like the type of music I played. It wasn’t what was expected of me, Wes was always better at that.”

“Why haven’t you told Wes I’m awake?”

He paused, leaning back in his seat. “That’s harder to answer.”

Henry came back outside at that moment with waters. “Did you decide what you will be having this evening.” He asked as he set the glasses down on the table. 

“Just the regular.” Soul said looking away from me. 

“That will be out shortly.” He left again. 

“Continue.” I said.

He sighed. “I haven’t told him because it’s complicated. If I tell him you woke up, he’d want to come back, but he’s on tour right now and that wouldn’t go over well with my grandmother. And if I told him you woke up and didn’t have any memories, he’d only want to stay longer, and he would worry about me more than he already is.”

“I think he’d want to know.”

“It’s not a good time.”

“Tsubaki said Stein had threatened to sedate you after I got hurt.” I blurted out.

“That’s not a question.” Soul said evasively. 

I glared at him. “Why don’t you ever talk about how you felt?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, and it’s all okay now anyway. You’re awake.”

“But I don’t remember anything, and you said that would make Wes worry more.” 

“You don’t miss anything do you. I might’ve lied earlier, there’s one thing I won’t tell you.” He distracted me before I could protest. “At the hospital, why did you want to come home with me and not your father?” 

“I felt safe with you.” I looked towards the fence. “I couldn’t remember anything, anything at all, but my whole body was attuned to you, it calmed me down to be near you. And you looked so tired, I wanted to help.”

I looked back at Soul and he was smiling softly. “Sounds like you.”

“How long have we known each other?”

“Through school and then some, and then some being eight years.”

So much time not to remember. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“My favorite color is orange.” 

“That’s not what I meant.”

“But did you know that?”

I laughed. “No, I can’t say I did.”

I paused before continuing. “Soul we were together, weren’t we?” That white dress. 

“We were together all the time.” He was evading again. 

“That’s not what I mean.” 

“Maka that’s the one thing I won’t tell you because I don’t want to pressure you. I don’t want you to think you have to behave a certain way.” He looked at me the whole time he spoke trying to gauge my expression. 

I could tell he wasn’t going to budge. “Soul I don’t want to start at the beginning.”

“How do you feel about me Maka?” 

“Confused.” I looked down at my hands twisting my palms around my fingers like a snake. “I don’t feel the same way about you as I do BlackStar or Tsubaki or any of our friends, but I also can’t keep my feelings straight when my memories give me pieces of a puzzle but not the outer rim, not the foundation.” 

“Maka I don’t want you to stress yourself out over this.” 

I looked away from my hands, back at him, his face didn’t really hold an expression, but he still just looked sad. 

“It’s just our first date.” Soul said.

“But it’s not.” I ran my hands across my face. “It’s not our first date.”

Soul stood up and walked to my side of the table. He offered me a hand. “Dance with me.”

“I thought you didn’t like dancing.”

“That was fifteen year old Soul who couldn’t tell you he loved you.”

My eyes jerked to his then, he didn’t falter, his hand still held out to me. 

“Maka, I have to tell you something.” Soul walked in front of the couch where I had been reading a book, his soul a frantic mess, the wavelength beating like a hummingbird’s wings.

“What’s wrong?” His soul was startling, I’d never felt it like this before. 

“Nothings wrong. I just-” He paced back and forth between the coffee table and couch. 

“Soul?” When he paced back by me, I grabbed his hand. “Tell me what’s wrong.” 

“I love you.” He said very seriously in one quick breath, his soul still a mess.

“Well I could’ve told you that, I love you too idiot.” I let go of his hand to pick my book up again, confused as to why he was freaking out.

“No dammit Maka.” He grabbed the book from my hand tossing it on the coffee table behind him. 

I started to complain, but his hands grabbed my face and he leaned down. 

“Soul?”

He kissed me so quickly I wasn’t sure it happened.

“Maka I’m in love with you.” His eyes were pleading that he didn’t have to repeat himself again. 

In love? “Oh.” I said quietly. 

Soul stopped pacing and turned, walking directly out of the room like he was going to go commit seppuku. 

In love with me? He was in love with me. 

“Wait Soul.” I half fell off the couch trying to catch his hand before he could walk away. I caught the tail end of his shirt before I lurched up. I stood there holding the back of his shirt, he didn’t turn around. “Soul.”

I grabbed his arm then, trying to reel him back around.

“Kiss me again.”

He turned around, his soul going from hummingbird wings to drawn bowstring. He just looked at me like he hadn’t heard what I said, so I threw my arms around his neck and pulled him to me. 

Standing on my tip toes I said again. “Kiss me.”

It seemed to click that time. Soul kissed me, hands pulling my waist to him like he would never get the chance to again. It was sloppy and new and unpracticed, but it was Soul- my Soul. 

How had I not realized in all this time? It’d never just been me. 

Fire tore through my head with new abandon, I didn’t get the chance to take Soul’s hand because my hands flew to my forehead instead, trying to hold the bone together against the pressure. 

And then Soul was on his knees to my left, hands on my waist turning me towards him. He was looking up at me helplessly. I tried to smile pass the pain, but it was so blinding I couldn’t even feel his soul. 

I wanted to scream. I was holding my breath instead.

“Maka breath.” To his credit Soul’s voice didn’t show the panic his face had. 

I let my head fall forward against his shoulder and let out one stuttering breath against his neck. 

“Breath.” One of his hands started rubbing my back.

I dug for the feeling of his soul past the pain. I’m not sure how long it took for me to find it, but when I did it was like cool water on a fresh burn, it sapped all the heat away. 

“I’m okay.” I slid my hands off my head leaning back upright in my seat, his hands did not leave me. 

“What did you remember?” He stood back up offering me his hand again. I took it this time. 

He pulled me up from the seat and away from the table, he held our intertwined hands out and placed the other on my back swaying to the sound of the music I hadn’t noticed before.

“I think the first time you told me you loved me.”

He looked down at my face. “I can’t decide which is worst, you replying: ‘oh’, or you crumbling over in pain to my saying I love you.”

Soul stepped out of the sway into something more complicated, leading me patiently to follow his movements. 

“Soul-” I started to talk and then paused.

“You don’t have to say it back, it took you over a month the first time. I just wanted you to know.”

He dipped me backwards gently before pulling me back to him, closer this time. 

“Your soul wavelength took the pain away, it just took me a minute to find it.” 

The tether to which was stable now, a taunt string—a clear connection. 

Soul kissed my forehead, his lips lingering there as he spoke. “I’m glad. You know, you can read soul’s a lot better than I can. I can feel yours of course, but you have soul perception. I don’t. So, I always kind of thought you knew I loved you before I said it, but you didn’t. You were so wholly unaware to something that was so obvious to everyone else. I think that’s why it took me so long to tell you; I was afraid you knew but didn’t feel the same, and that was why you never said anything.”

“What made you decide to tell me.”

“Tsubaki.” 

He spun me and then pulled me back to him before kissing me slowly. His lips parted mine before he ran his tongue across my lower lip, lips moving silently with mine. He pulled back, respecting that we were in public; but, I entangled my arms around his neck pulling him back to me, biting his lower lip before I kissed him far more aggressively. His tongue found its way into my mouth this time sliding along mine teasingly. 

Someone cleared their throat from the doorway, and we jumped apart like a broken spring. 

Henry snickered as he set the food down on our table. He’d lost all gauze of his former act quickly spouting, leave room for Jesus, with a roar of laughter before dodging Soul’s glare to escape back inside. 

Both Avery and the old man came up with an excuse to come by the table to talk to me before me and Soul left the restaurant, giving me the sneaking feeling Soul had told them the whole truth about my memories. 

I didn’t call him out on it. 

“Soul.” I broke the silence between us as we were heading back to our apartment.

He kept walking but turned to look over at me on his right. 

“Why don’t you sleep?”

He turned his head back forward as I stared at the side of his face. 

“You said you were an open book tonight.” I placed a hand on the back of his arm, my fingers craving to be beneath the fabric there.

“You’re not the only one who has nightmares.”

My fingers gripped the fabric of his shirt tightly as I spoke. “What do you dream about.”

“You.”

“What about me?”

I saw his eyes glance sideways to mine. 

“I want to know Soul, please.”

“About losing you.”

“How did you get me out of the woods?”

“After you jumped in front of the wolf Lykos called it off, eyeing me before she just disappeared. I didn’t save you, she just left.”

“But you got me out of the woods.”

“I carried you.” He paused. “Maka I don’t want to take you back there.” His head turned towards me, his eyes locking mine in a gaze that had us both halting just a few steps from the door leading up to our apartment.

“You don’t think we can beat her?” My hand was still gripping his sleeve like he might try to run away.

“Maka I don’t want to find out.” His eyes were pleading. 

I understood. Even if the chances were in our favor, he didn’t want to risk it, risk me. “Soul the idea of waking back up without you terrifies me, but they need me to go.”

“I know.” He started back walking again. “We don’t have a choice.”

“Soul no matter what I’ll find my way back to you.” I said to his back. “I promise.” I won’t forget you again. 

“You might not have a choice.” I barely heard him speak as he opened the door into the apartment complex. 

We made it up the stairs and back into our apartment without much more conversation, my hand never leaving his shirt sleeve the whole way up the stairs like a child clinging to their parent. 

After we came in, I walked over to the couch, letting go of his sleeve in the process. I picked up Lykos’ file from the coffee table before sitting, trying to make sense of my notes.

Fourth Gorgon sister- how did we not know? Others still alive?  
Medusa?- Black blood, cooperative research- stolen?  
Why now, after the treaty?- why let herself be found?  
Motive?- revenge? Fun?

It was just pages of gibberish, nothing stuck out to me, nothing did anything for me. 

“I thought we agreed we weren’t talking about Lykos tonight.” Soul said from behind me, slowly slipping the paper from my hand. 

“Why would she let herself be found, not once but twice. It’s like she’s not scared at all, like she’s playing with us.” I pulled the hair ties from my hair in frustration. 

I heard papers get tossed down on a counter somewhere behind me before Soul came around to the front side of the couch to sit beside me. He grabbed my waist pulling me back against his chest. 

I didn’t resist, just leaned my head back into him like a pillow while I continued. “Do you think she can control us somehow? Like Medusa did with Crona?”

“Crona was her kid, she didn’t know any better.”

“But the black blood it influenced her.”

“Only when she gave herself over to it.”

“But-” She lured me into the alley. I couldn’t bring myself to say it—to worry him. 

“Maka we have three weeks.” Soul cut me off. “You don’t have to figure it out tonight.”

We sat in silence for a moment, his hand toying with the hem of my shirt while I tried to push aside the thoughts of Lykos. 

“Tell me something else I don’t know.” I said attempting to take my mind off Lykos.

“You snore.” Soul answered quickly. 

“Hey.” I twisted around out of his grasp to look at his face. “I don’t snore.”

“You do.” Soul laughed. “You’ve woken yourself up snoring before.”

Soul dodged me trying to elbow him as he continued. “It’s true I would know, you woke me up to blame it on me before passing back out abruptly, only to snore in my ear some more.”

“This just sounds like a ploy to convince me you don’t snore.”

Soul shrugged smirking. “I would never lie to someone with amnesia, what kind of man would that make me?”

He just laughed as I attempted to chop him over the head, he caught my wrist in his hand easily pulling me forward instead. His free hand slid behind my waist pulling me into his lap, causing me to end up straddling him before he kissed me. 

It wasn’t like the kiss at the restaurant, this kiss wasn’t meant for public. 

His mouth had mine open in a single moment, his tongue sliding along mine before it retreated into his mouth only so he could bite my upper lip, dragging his shark teeth across the skin there like a predator. He let go of my wrist, that hand finding it’s way to my waist pulling me even closer to him. 

I didn’t have time to recover from the sudden onslaught before his teeth were on my ear, tongue sliding in ways that should be illegal against the ring of my ear before he bit the lobe, hard. 

A slight moan escaped my mouth and then we were both undone. 

My hands wrapped around his neck only to dig my fingernails into the skin there, as he sucked on the skin along my neck. His hands were no longer on my waist, they found their way beneath my shirt traveling up my back—flushing the skin there with heat. 

I wasn’t even sure how my hands got beneath his shirt by the time they were there, nails scrapping down his chest as I ground against his groin, taking advantage of the fact I was already straddling him. 

“Maka.” He gasped against my neck as his hands found their way to my bra, undoing the hook with ease. 

His mouth was on mine again, broken gasps intermingling between our tongues as his lips moved with mine in a way that couldn’t have been real, how perfectly we fit together. 

Soul shifted beneath me, bringing the bulge in his pants to my attention as I worked my hips against his, one of my hands traveling down between us to stroke him through his pants. A hiss escaped his lips as he moved to set me down against the couch beneath him, relinquishing my position of power. He pulled my shirt over my head with one hand before his teeth grazed against my collar bone. My fingers buried their way aggressively into his hair to grab a hold of something, anything, as his hand found my breast, pinching my nipple between his fingers before his lips closed around it. 

I moaned again, barely capable of saying his name before I tore his shirt off too. My legs curled around his as he lowered his hips to rub himself against me, heat pooling between my legs with each thrust, wanting the barriers to be gone. 

My fingers found the buttons on his jeans, fumbling there only momentarily before Soul’s free hand moved from my breast to my wrist to peel my hands from his waistband. He pinned my hands above my head as his lips traveled down across my stomach to the hem of my skirt. His red eyes looking up at me as he used his teeth the peel the clothing from my body slowly. His hand only releasing my wrists when he needed it to take my skirt the rest of the way off. 

He slid a lazy hand up my inner thigh teasingly, my hips squirming beneath him as his fingers reached the edge of my underwear only to travel back down my thigh away from my growing arousal. 

“Soul.” I leaned my head back as his fingers trailed back up my thigh, running across the fabric covering my entrance this time; my breath turning to a ragged mess as he continued to run his fingers across me through my underwear. 

His head leaned down and he bit the skin of my inner thigh teasingly as his thumb rolled across my clit so softly, too softly.

“Soul.” I gasped louder in complaint. 

I could’ve sworn I felt him laugh against my leg as his mouth trailed closer to my entrance, his tongue trailing behind his teeth as he made his lazy path up between my legs. His thumb never giving me the pressure I wanted against my clit until his tongue ran across the fabric of my underwear, then he rubbed my clit hard. 

I gasped in a way that sounded like I was in pain just before he pulled the last remnant of fabric from my body, his tongue quickly sliding against my cunt like the liquid there was a delicacy. His tongue swirled around my clit before he sucked, sliding a finger into me in the same moment. I lost control of my hips, bucking against his finger in an effort to push him further in me. 

His finger only slid out once before a second came back in with it, he curled his fingers inside me, rubbing against the ridges of my g-spot with a practiced ease as his tongue pressed down against my clit, running back and forth over the bundle as his fingers slid back out and in, curling back to my g-spot without missing a beat. 

A mixture of fluid slid down between my legs as I tried to keep from bucking against him, my breath hidden behind the slew of moans escaping my mouth with each new movement. Soul’s teeth grazed against my clit as a third finger slid inside me, my vision almost failing against the feeling of it. 

“Soul.” I gasped. “That feels so good.” 

His fingers pushed into me harder as I gave up on restraining my hips, I moved with him wanting him as far inside of me as his fingers could reach, as my arousal built. He sucked against my clit once more, rolling his tongue across it before his fingers slid out and took place against my clit instead. He rolled the bundle of nerves between two of his fingers as his tongue slid inside me with ease. 

My fingers pulled against his hair, not knowing what else to hold onto as his thumb worked against my clit with more pressure than it had before, chasing the brink of my orgasm as he continued to lap his tongue deep inside me, his tongue finding new ways to make me scream his name as I came. His tongue sliding out of me and across my length, teasing my swollen clit while I gasped, breathless. 

The ends of my orgasm rolling through my body like an electric field as he finally sat back to admire his work. 

Soul brought himself up to my face, his lips against my ear, my arousal on his lips as he whispered smugly. “They don’t call me Soul Eater for nothing.”

He kissed me lightly, a smile playing across his lips as I tried to decide if the effort to hit him with a book was too much. 

I decided to catch my breath instead, my whole body limp with pleasure as he sat up looking at me. 

“I need to clean your stitches.” He looked at my hand. “And re-bandage your hand.” 

I sat up too, my eyes falling to his obvious erection. “What about you?” I asked trying not to blush. 

He tossed me his shirt as he stood. “Don’t worry about it.”

He offered me his hand after I put his shirt on, still very aware of the bulge in his pants as he continued to act like it wasn’t there, leading me to the bathroom. 

“Sit.” He directed motioning to the toilet. He set about mixing the special soap in a sink full of water before collecting a rag from beneath the sink. 

I offered him my hand and he unwrapped it carefully, tossing the bandage in a little trash can before he dabbed the rag across the cut; the warm water stinging slightly as it went across. It had started bleeding again, trace amounts of black blood drooling from the surface as he worked. Apparently, I’d been gripping his hair harder than I thought I was. He wrapped my hand in a new bandage before he spoke again. 

“Can you hold your shirt up for me?” 

I did, ignoring the fact that I was naked from the waist down as he peeled the bandage back. He made quick work of cleaning that wound too before he bandaged it again, his face not holding the same torturous appearance as it had the last time, but he didn’t look particularly happy either. 

By the time he was finished he was calm, previous moment forgotten in him torturing himself again. I stood up wrapping my arms around his waist before he could walk away. He slid a hand across my head letting it rest on my face as I looked up at him. 

“Why-” I had to turn my face away from his, realizing I would never get this out looking at him. “Why didn’t you want me to-” 

“To what?” He looked a little confused, his thumb running across my cheek absent mindedly.

“You know, earlier, why didn’t you want me to-to touch you.” I barely got the last few words out, laying my face against his chest so he couldn’t see me blush. 

“Maka, I don’t not want you to touch me. I just didn’t want you to think you had to return the favor.” 

“What if I want to?” I asked directly into his chest, my voice muffled against his skin. 

“Another time. Come on-” He said picking me up. “Let’s go to bed.”

I would’ve protested him carrying me, along with other things, but I was tired, and liked being close to him. I just wrapped my arms around his neck, letting him carry me down the hall as I breathed in the smell of him, our souls pulling on either side of the invisible tether in a way I couldn’t describe as anything but playful. 

He set me on the bed before kicking his pants off; he walked over to the dresser pulling out what I assumed was sweatpants, but I couldn’t tell by the dim street-lighting filtering into the room. 

“Do you want some underwear?” He asked like it was something he had a thousand times before. 

He didn’t actually wait for me to reply, like he knew I wouldn’t be able to voice the words as he sat on the other side of the bed handing me a pair. 

“Thanks.”

“Mmmh.” He mumbled as he slid under the covers pulling me down with him. 

I wrapped my arms around his waist, curling on my side to lay my head on his chest. His right arm fell across my side as we lay there in silence. I followed the sound of his breathing to sleep. 

But it wasn’t me who had the nightmare this time. 

I felt like barely any time had past before Soul’s arm jerked against my back in his sleep. He mumbled my name and I propped myself up to look at his face. “Soul?”

I put my hand on his face, rubbing the hair back out of his eyes. His arm flinched behind me again.

“Hey, Soul.” I nudged him slightly trying to wake him up. And then again when he didn’t. 

“Maka.” He said my name again, louder this time, but his eyes still weren’t open. 

His soul pulled against mine like an over eager fisherman checking for a catch. 

“Soul.” I ran my hand across his forehead again, through his hair and back behind his ear. “I’m right here.” 

My thumb running across the skin above his ear, I watched his face as he winced at something in his dream; his soul mimicking the expression. I tried nudging him again, harder, but he still didn’t wake up. I tried a different tactic, asserting my presence beside him, here through the tether of our souls. 

“It’s just a dream.” I was sitting up at this point, cross-legged beside him when he finally woke up, his right arm lurching for me, making sure I was still there. 

His hand landed on my thigh as his eyes focused on mine. I slid my hand out from behind his ear, running my fingers along his eyebrow, his cheek bones, his lips, tracing his facial features as he watched me. 

“Want to talk about it?” I asked. 

He closed his eyes, letting me run my index finger across his eyelids lightly one by one as he relaxed. 

“No.” He said, eyes snapping back open as my fingers ran along the bridge of his nose. 

“Are you always this secretive?” I leaned forward as I spoke, my lips hovering above his. 

He leaned his head up to kiss me softly, as softly as my fingertip had trailed his eyelids. When he pulled away, I kissed his forehead before laying back down beside him letting him curl around me like a weighted blanket. His arms wrapping around me before one of his legs slid over mine. 

I ran my fingers up the length of his forearm I could reach under his grip, as his breath tickled across my ear. “I love you Maka.”

I relaxed into his hold, scooting back closer into him. He kissed my cheek. I listened to him breath until I was sure he was asleep, only then did I let myself drift back off to sleep.


	5. Partners

When I woke up again daylight was filtering in through the windows instead of streetlights, Soul still wrapped around me protectively. I didn’t realize he was awake until he spoke in my ear, as I tried to shift in his grip. 

“Good morning.” He loosened his hold on me as he spoke, letting me turn to look at him—but not get up. 

“Did you sleep okay?” I asked, searching his red eyes for the answer. He didn’t look tied, just content. 

“How do you fit so much worry into that little body of yours.” Soul laughed, rolling onto his back to look at the ceiling; his arms disappearing from around me. 

I slid my arm across his bare chest as I turned on my stomach to look up at his face, my chin resting on his arm. “The dark circles are gone.”

“Mmmh.” He hummed closing his eyes. “How did you sleep?”

Very well. “Well Lykos didn’t come barging in this time.”

“Oh good, so I don’t need to go hide the knives? I was just about to get up to do so.” 

His chest shook under my hand as he laughed, and I elbowed him hard before sitting up. My hand sliding from his chest, fingers running momentarily over his scars feeling the grooves of them. He turned and grabbed my waist pulling me back down against him. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” He said in my ear, his voice husky.

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know.” He said into my hair this time, burying his face against me. 

“We have to start training today.”

His hold on me tightened. I let out a breath before twisting in his grip to face him. His eyes landing on mine as I turned. I slid a hand behind his neck into his hair, running my fingers through the strands easily. 

We stayed like that for a moment, neither of us saying anything. 

“Come on.” I said attempting to pull him up by his arms; he laid there with an amused expression on his face before he finally conceded, sitting up with me. 

He let me get out of bed this time; watched me as I meandered around the room finding clothes to wear, before he got up too, following suit. 

As we got ready, I asked, “Where do we go to train? I’m assuming we can’t do it here.”

I was right, we did not try and train in the apartment; instead Soul took me to a clearing in a wooded area by the school. Images of me, Kid, and BlackStar with weapons in our hands trying to resonate as a team flickered in my mind as we walked into the clearing. Somehow, they were reassuring. 

“We’ve been here before.” I said looking around, there were marks on the trees, a few stumps left scattered about. 

I ran my fingers across the groove in the tree closest to me. It was deep, the lighter yellow color of the inner wood showing its face. 

“Yeah, we trained here a lot when we were still in school.” 

I turned to him, flexing my fingers in the gloves covering my hands. “Okay, I’m ready.”

Soul snickered from his position in the middle of the clearing watching me. “Come over here than.”

I complied, walking over to the center as well. He took my hand and winked at me, his form shifting against light from flesh and bone, to metal. 

He was heavier than I thought he’d be; the tip of his blade landing against the ground as I hung onto the shaft of the scythe adjusting to the feel of him—finding his weapon’s center of mass. The metal wasn’t cold like I thought it would be; no, it was just as warm as Soul was. 

I stared at him. 

A thousand moments flipped by in seconds long clips in my mind; none of them lasting long enough to make any sense like someone was strobe lighting memories into my eyes.

“Are you okay?” A flash of his face shined in the scythe. “Maka?”

“I’m fine.” I said, trying to pull my mind away from the strobe lights before they gave me a seizure, attempting to focus on what was happening in front of me. 

I lifted the blade up, twirling the scythe in-between my hands a few times experimentally; it felt like muscle memory—like riding a bike. The more I moved him the less he weighed, realizing it wasn’t so much my hands as my soul that caused the movement. I spun the scythe in front of me like a shield, before reeling it back and behind my body, starting to walk around the clearing as I turned him in new ways. 

“Why don’t you try hitting a tree?” Soul suggested. I wondered if he was tired of spinning in circles. Could he get dizzy like this?

I listened silently, not breaking from my own thoughts, swinging his blade toward one of the trees already gouged with marks. The blade sunk into the tree just far enough for me not to be able to pull it back out. 

“Shit.” I said, attempting and failing, to pull the blade free. I let go, stomping away only somewhat melodramatically. 

Soul shifted back into his body before walking over to me. “That was good.”

I walked closer to where he’d been in the tree, the mark no where near as deep or lethal looking as every other indentation in the tree. I gave him a disbelieving look.

“No, it wasn’t. I got you stuck in a tree and this mark isn’t half as deep as the rest of them.” Frustration riled in my chest turning my tone sour. 

“Maka it’s going to take some time.” His hand landed on my shoulder lightly. “Think of everything you did do: you moved me with your soul, my weapon form didn’t burn you-”

“Burn me?” I looked at him raising an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Our soul’s fell out of sync once; you tried to use me, and I burned your hands.”

I didn’t think too hard on what he said, I had a one track mind at the moment. “Turn back I want to keep going.”

He sighed but listened; there was a scythe in my hands in the next moment and I went back to hacking at the trees for what felt like hours, my arms aching by the end of it. 

I didn’t stop until I could cut as deep as I had before. Even then it didn’t feel good enough. I had to be ready. I couldn’t leave Soul again. 

This patterned continued for a week; I woke Soul up in the morning and made him take me to the clearing, where I hacked at trees until my arms ached. Even then I kept going, wanting to be where I had been before. Wanting to be strong enough not to lose him. 

After the first couple days of hacking, Soul suggested we start off with jogging instead, building my stamina back up as well. Everyday by the time we got back home I was too exhausted to do much other than sleep; Soul cooking food for me while I passed out on the couch. We didn’t talk much—I was too wrapped up in my mind to notice. 

“I think we should try and resonate.” I said looking straight ahead, Soul in his weapon form in my hands. 

I was a little out of breath from running. 

There was a moment before he responded. “Okay, ready when you are.”

I took a few steadying breaths, feeling for Soul’s soul with mine, the tether between them thickening as the wavelength between us passed back and forth. It was a feeling that was hard to describe, like a wave with no weight rebounding back and forth off our bodies—maybe more like a sound wave than water. 

“Okay.” I took another breath, focusing on sending my soul wavelength to his. It came back stronger, building. “Let’s go, soul resonance!” 

I found myself yelling, trying to convince myself I could do this as my feet slid across the ground, stabilizing my body as Soul’s scythe form brightened, the blade growing into an obscenely large crescent moon.

Something threaded itself between our souls slowly like smoke seeping through a crack, and the connection between our souls stuttered. As I moved, I slipped, sending a shock wave from Soul rumbling through the trees as his blade turned back to normal. 

“Soul, what was that?”

“You pulled back.” Did I? He shifted to his human form, hands finding mine as he looked at me. “Why’d you pull back?”

“I felt something threading its way to you.” The smoke in my blood, Lykos. 

“Lykos’ magic.” 

“I think so.”

“We can’t resonate if you don’t let it travel to me too.” Soul said casually like there was no inherent risk in that fact. 

“No.” I said jerking my eyes to his. His red irises not looking the least bit concerned at what he just said.

“Maka we’ve been through worst than a little witch magic.” 

“But you don’t know what it will do.” 

“No, but I trust you. You’ll bring me back if you have to.”

“Soul’s soul is in here. isn’t it?” I was looking at Soul, but it wasn’t him, his eyes too wide with madness. My fingers wrapped lightly around a small chest. 

“Yes, he locked the last bit in there before I could get to it.” The devil in his body broke a too-wide smile across Soul’s face. 

“Then I’m going to get him out.” I opened the small chest, sending my soul searching for Soul’s ahead of the black wave of the devil’s madness washing toward us both.

I didn’t give the memory a chance to give me a headache, focusing on Soul’s wavelength before the pain could even begin. “No.”

“You have to trust yourself too Maka.” Something like sadness seeped into his voice, as he looked at me, I looked away. “And you have to trust me.”

I didn’t respond, frustrated with myself for messing up. I had to get this right. I was the one who lost my memories like an idiot. 

“Come on, let’s head home. We can try again tomorrow.”

We did try the next day, and the day after that. Neither of which proved to be very successful, as my fear of letting the smoke reach Soul’s soul only grew. On the third day of trying, Soul burned me. The memory of him searing through my gloves, as we fought a werewolf, coming back to me as well. It felt like we were going backwards, and our time was already halfway gone. 

“Maka stay still.” Soul complained trying to put some burn ointment on the blisters across my palms. 

“Sorry.” I mumbled. I was frustrated, frustrated we were going backwards, frustrated we couldn’t resonate, frustrated that my blood was contaminated. How was I supposed to willingly let Lykos’ magic seep into Soul too, not knowing if it would stay there? What if he lost his memories too?

“I’m calling BlackStar and Tsubaki and telling them to come over.” Soul said.

“Why?”

“Because you haven’t taken a day’s rest since a week and a half ago and you’re hurting yourself.” Soul said sharply, stalking over to the phone on the wall. 

I just stayed on the bar-stool I was sitting on, probably pouting, not that I would admit it out loud. 

I could hear BlackStar’s voice on the phone even from my position multiple feet away. 

“We’re going out.” Soul announced as he got off the phone. 

“What?”

“You heard me; go get ready.” He wasn’t asking. 

“What about training in the morning?” It was already dark out; we should be going to bed. 

“We’re not. You’re taking a day off before the frustrated wrinkle between your eyes gets any deeper.” Was I that obvious?

Soul walked over to me, standing in-between my legs at the bar-stool; his hands slid up my thighs, resting just before my ass on either side. 

“Am I going to have to convince you to come, or are you going to behave?” He said devilishly, a smile spreading across his face as he leaned in to bite my ear gently, like he was worried of doing any more damage to my body. Or like he was worried I didn’t want him to. 

I realized we’d barely touched outside of training. 

How distant had I been this past week?

His lips found mine between his words as he spoke. “It’ll-” His lips went back to mine. “-be-” He kissed me one last time. “-fun.”

His lips moved to my neck, worrying the skin there, distracting me from my thoughts. I tried to resist wrapping my legs around his hips as heat started to pool between my legs and failed—my legs finding a mind of their own, pulling him closer to me. 

My breath hitched as he bit down—apparently, he lost whatever concern had been holding him back before. I ran my hands down his arms finding his hands and pulling them farther around me, onto my ass, before wrapping my arms around his neck. 

“SOUL, MAKA!” Blackstar screamed from behind the door, pounding his fist against the frame; the whole wall shook. “THE STAR HAS ARRIVED!”

“You’ve got to be shitting me.” Soul looked at the door in disbelief. “How the Death did he get here so fast.”

I ignored BlackStar, running my hands into Soul’s hair to pull his face back to mine so I could kiss him; my tongue sliding into his mouth running beneath his, deepening the kiss. 

“PUT YOUR CLOTHES BACK ON AND OPEN THE DOOR!” BlackStar continued to cry from the hallway. 

I could’ve sworn I heard someone from downstairs say, shut up, just before Tsubaki scolded BlackStar in the hall.

Soul slipped away from me reluctantly, going to let BlackStar in. 

BlackStar was in some lose fitting jeans, cuffed at his ankles, and a white button down shirt, barely buttoned. Tsubaki wasn’t in her normal outfit either, instead of a tunic she was wearing a teal dress. Something that enunciated every one of her curves as she walked over to me; her boots clicking against the ground.

“Tsubaki you look amazing.”

She blushed saying in her quiet voice. “Thank you, BlackStar convinced me to wear it.”

BlackStar and Soul were currently in a screaming match, it was hard to tell what about. Or how they were already even screaming. 

“Come on.” Tsubaki grabbed my hand pulling me toward the bathroom. “Let’s get you ready.”

After she deposited me in the bathroom, she instructed me to blow dry my hair, which was still wet from the shower I’d taken after me and Soul got back. She went to get me a change of clothes. 

Even over the sound of the blow dryer, I could hear BlackStar’s shouting from the living room. I was starting to wonder when one of the neighbors would come up to complain. Owing to the fact my hair had been air drying for a couple hours, it didn’t take that long to finish the process with the dryer; Tsubaki coming back into the bathroom by the time I was done. 

She closed the door back behind her and handed me a dress. 

“A dress?” I asked. 

“I’m wearing one.” She smiled mischievously, an expression I wasn’t used to seeing on her face. “Plus, this is Soul’s favorite.”

“BlackStar is wearing jeans.”

“You’re lucky he’s wearing a nice shirt; he had a t-shirt on before I made him change.” She laughed at herself. 

I still wasn’t convinced. “Where are we going?”

“A jazz club.”

“So, I won’t be the only one in a dress?”

Tsubaki gestured to her own dress. 

“Besides you.”

“No, you won’t be the only one. Now put this on so I can do your hair.”

I took the dress reluctantly; she looked away politely while I changed. The dress was black and strapless, tight around my chest but billowing out nicely to just below my knees; the edges of it forming mild ripples. 

“See, you look pretty.” Tsubaki set herself to curling my hair, pulling back portions of it when she was finished, so it didn’t all fall in my face. 

When we came out of the bathroom Soul and BlackStar were drinking, or more accurately in the middle of shot gunning two beers. 

BlackStar finished first. “HA! You thought you could out drink me, BUT I AM A GOD.” He yelled proudly. 

Soul didn’t get a chance to reply; he got distracted by me exiting the bathroom. His mouth falling open for a split minute before he closed it quickly, turning back to BlackStar who had moved on from their previous topic.

“FINALLY. Girls are so slow, a star like me would never take that long to get ready.”

I grabbed a book off the shelf to my right, throwing it at BlackStar with deadly accuracy, causing Soul to spit beer out of his mouth laughing. 

“Not so much of a star now.” Soul remarked to BlackStar as he rubbed his head. 

“I wasn’t ready!” He turned to look at me. “Throw another one you’ll never hit me twice.”

“BlackStar I thought we were leaving.” Tsubaki said trying to avoid the war that was getting ready to unfold. 

“Right. Follow me.” He called as he ran out the door; Tsubaki followed, but at a fourth of the pace. 

Soul waited by the door to walk beside me. He was wearing some black pants that looked suspiciously like jeans, but also like BlackStar he was wearing a button down shirt. Only his was red and was much more neatly buttoned. He looked good. He smiled at me, shark teeth spreading across his face as he adjusted the hairband in his hair. 

Soul leaned down to my ear as we walked out the door to say. “It’s too bad you don’t remember what happened last time you wore that dress.”

I blushed at the tone of his voice, heat immediately running to my cheeks and elsewhere; his breath warm against the skin of my ear as his hand came to a rest against the small of my back for a moment before he turned to lock the door.

I had a feeling Tsubaki knew what happened. 

Tsubaki and BlackStar stayed just out of hearing’s reach on the way to the club; Soul didn’t talk much regardless, although he walked close enough that our arms brushed with each step. I found myself wondering if I’d been this quiet all week. I hadn’t meant to be. 

I broke the silence. 

“Soul?” I asked, only looking out the corner of my eye at his face, which shifted to look at me. 

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been quiet all week, haven’t I?” I looked toward BlackStar and Tsubaki’s backs. 

“You didn’t notice?”

“Not till just now. I’ve been distracted.” More like frustrated. “Sorry.” I apologized meekly. 

“What’s been distracting you?” Soul snaked his arm across my shoulder pulling me against him. I glanced over at his face only finding him to be looking forward now. 

“I don’t want to put you in that situation again. I have to be stronger than I was before.”

“Maka, Lykos never fought us, she split us up instead. She has no idea how strong we are.” He emphasized the word we, like I wasn’t getting the message. “You’re not fighting Lykos, we are. You’re not alone in this.”

I didn’t respond right away, letting the warmth of his side seep through his clothes into me. Maybe he was right, maybe I was looking at this the wrong way. 

“Have we been here before?” I ended up changing the subject anyway. 

“Yes, but not enough for anyone to know who we are.” He smirked at me knowingly. “You really are a worry wart.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings not knowing who they are.” I’d already done enough of that to Soul.

“It wouldn’t be your fault.” Soul said as we followed our friends into the jazz club, the sounds of a piano drifting toward us as we found a table toward the back, where it was easier to talk. The stage with all the instruments almost as far away as it could be. 

“Are you guys ready to beat Lykos’ ass.” BlackStar announced as we sat down.

Soul responded before I could even think about it. “We will be.”

“Why don’t we talk about something else BlackStar.” Tsubaki added.

“Right. How about the time I single handedly defeated Arachne?”

“If you defeated Arachne than why did I eat her soul and not Tsubaki.” Soul rolled his eyes as he spoke.

“Because I’m such a big guy I thought I’d share.”

“BlackStar, even if Maka doesn’t remember anything. I don’t think she’s going to immediately fall for your stories.” Tsubaki responded. 

A saxophone started to pick up along with the piano, followed by a trumpet, the mixture of sounds intermingling in surprising ways. Soul was watching the pianist, his fingers twitching beneath the table. 

I still preferred Soul’s music. 

BlackStar and Tsubaki were sitting across from me and Soul in the booth, Tsubaki and Soul both on the inside. BlackStar started to stand and he motioned for me to come with him. “Come on Maka, we’re going to get drinks.”

Soul started to speak, but BlackStar cut him off. “Stop being a nursemaid. Come on Maka.” He repeated, grabbing my hand this time to pull me up with him. 

Soul didn’t follow, allowing BlackStar to drag me over to the bar on the far left wall. He slid a card to the bartender before broadcasting that he would be starting a tab. 

“Give me five shots of whiskey.” He added.

The bartender lined five shot glasses up on the wooden counter, flipping a bottle of whiskey up allowing the amber fluid to fill one glass before quickly moving to the next without breaking the flow, all the way to the end of the line.

I made the false assumption that BlackStar was taking these shots back to the table.

“Alright Maka, think you can beat me to the third shot?” His pupils glinted like stars with the challenge.

I slammed two shots back while Soul laughed behind me, BlackStar looking dumbfounded as I grabbed the third glass just before him. Tsubaki looking on with a mildly disapproving glance, even though she laughed at BlackStar’s defeat as well.

Soul’s hand snaked around my waist before he kissed my neck. 

“How do you do that!” BlackStar yelled. “Again, another line!” He looked to the bartender.

“Am I going to have to carry you home tonight?” Soul said in my ear. 

I didn’t answer turning in his grasp to kiss him in a way less than suited for public, as BlackStar made complaints about PDA. 

I let Soul’s wavelength lap against mine like the ocean tide, the science of not getting a splitting headache from my memories having been figured out.

“Alright, bet.” I said feeling oddly challenged by the version of me in my memory who could take shots faster than BlackStar.

“Ready?” He winked. “Go!”

I grabbed the first two shots at the same time he did, throwing the first back without tasting it. The second one was rougher, the burn of the liquid bringing a tinge of water to my eyes. BlackStar finished his second just a split hair behind me; I grabbed the third shot before he could, holding my breath so I wouldn’t smell the liquid as I downed it as well.

“There’s my drinking buddy.” BlackStar smacked my back audibly.

“Is that not Soul?” I asked, trying to keep from regurgitating the shots at the force of his hand on my back—hoping he didn’t see my face cringe. 

The bartender slid me a water without me asking; she had seen my face. 

“I bet you can’t do it again.” BlackStar’s eyes narrowed.

I bet I can’t either, I thought. But his attitude was contagious. “Try me.”

BlackStar beat me the second time; the fourth shot going down my throat like fire, causing me to cough and drink some water before I did the fifth. 

“I knew you couldn’t best a God twice.”

BlackStar got two beers, a cranberry vodka and a glass of white wine. Sliding me the wine and beer, while he carried the other two drinks.

“Don’t tell Soul how many shots we did.” BlackStar said in an astoundingly quiet voice. 

I didn’t feel drunk, but the alcohol also hadn’t had time to set in.

We sat back down at the table. BlackStar sliding Tsubaki the cranberry vodka as I gave Soul his beer. 

“What took so long?” Soul asked, suspiciously eyeing BlackStar.

The hand Soul didn’t have around his beer glass slid across my bare thigh, exciting the nerves there like firecrackers. I turned toward him which was my first mistake.

“You smell like whiskey.” Soul deadpanned as soon as a breath left my mouth, my second mistake, breathing. 

“BlackStar you didn’t.” Tsubaki tried to sound disapproving but was actually laughing. Soul looked less humored. 

“Hey, I’m innocent. She started it.”

“Hey!” I said glaring at BlackStar.

“Every man for himself.” BlackStar responded.

“She hasn’t drank in over six months, and you challenge her to a shot race.” Soul looked at BlackStar aggressively, but his thumb was rubbing lazy circles on my thigh.

“She could have said no.” BlackStar met Soul’s gaze. 

“When has she ever said no to a challenge?” Soul retorted. 

BlackStar just laughed. 

Soul sighed looking at me. “How do you feel?”

“Fine?” I replied.

“Give it thirty minutes.” BlackStar said in-between his laughter at the other side of the table. 

Tsubaki finished her drink taking BlackStar’s beer.

“Hey!” BlackStar turned to her. 

“I can’t take ya’ll anywhere.” Soul started laughing too, the upturn of his smile wrinkling the skin beside his eyes. He leaned over to me and added. “I’m going to have to carry you home, aren’t I.”

I sipped my wine, the stark difference of taste between it and the shots causing me to blink, taking a bigger gulp to wash the odd taste away. 

“No.” I replied stubbornly. 

Soul’s hand slid toward my knee coming to a rest just above it as he reiterated BlackStar’s give it thirty minutes. I found myself wishing his hand had gone in the opposite direction. 

I elbowed him. 

Tsubaki started filling me in on what her, and Liz and Patty, had been up to while I was asleep; Soul and BlackStar getting up multiple times to go get more beer. I ended up on the inside of the booth. 

Thirty minutes passed and BlackStar was right, the shots hit me like a bus. Everything made me laugh, which only made Tsubaki laugh, which in turn made me laugh more. The next time Soul sat down with a beer I took it from him, having finished my wine some time ago.

“You don’t even like beer.” He remarked.

“I’m too-drunk to taste it.” A couple of my words mixed together much to BlackStar’s joy. He applauded himself for getting me drunk as Soul went to get another beer. 

BlackStar slid me a shot across the table when Soul couldn’t see, and I took it before Tsubaki could stop either one of us. 

I couldn’t say for sure, but I was fairly positive Tsubaki stomped on BlackStar’s foot beneath the table. I took a few gulps of the beer Soul had got. I was right, I was too drunk to taste anything other than the carbonation, which tickled my throat in a pleasing way, only causing me to drink more. 

Soul sat back down with two glasses, his beer and water, which he slid to me. 

“Please drink this.” He said with an amused smirk on his face. 

“No. I like the car-bow-nation.” I sounded the word out as I spoke, causing BlackStar to lose it from the other side of the table. 

Soul withheld laughter as he said again. “Just trust me.” He pushed the class closer to me with his knuckles, so I picked it up.

To my surprise, I found it was carbonated too. Something I probably could’ve noticed by the bubbles in the water had I been slightly less intoxicated.

My face felt warm, and a little numb as I ran a hand across my cheek for no explicit purpose, taking another gulp of the water. I smiled at Soul. “It’s car-bow-nated.”

“It’s seltzer water.”

“You do know me.” I leaned on his shoulder, finishing the glass. 

Soul snickered quietly, the force of it shaking his shoulders. 

“BlackStar, why did you do this?” Soul said.

“Free entertainment.” BlackStar remarked. 

Tsubaki shook her head trying not to smile. 

“Are ya’ll talking about me.”

“No.” Soul and Tsubaki said at the same time BlackStar said. “Yes.”

They continued talking, something I didn’t quiet follow. Soul’s hand was around my waist holding me against him. I was debating putting my head in his lap. 

“Hey.” I said, looking at Soul. “Let me up; I have to pee.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” His eyes shifted down to my face.

“No, I am perfect-ally capable of peeing on my own.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he got up to let me out of the booth anyway. As I stood, I noticed BlackStar had his hand in Tsubaki’s lap, where their fingers were intertwined. I started to walk off in the wrong direction and Soul grabbed my arm, pointing to the opposite side of the club. He started to follow me then, but I pushed him back down into the seat with both my hands on his chest—almost causing me to fall down into his lap, almost—as he caught me, stabilizing my waist with his hands, raising an eyebrow at me. 

“Don’t make ah-comment.” I added, pushing my self back upright with my hands. 

My walking wasn’t the straightest in the world, but I also didn’t run into anything as I weaved my way through tables and people to the bathroom. So, there was that.

After I peed, I came back out and found my way slowly to the bar, in an effort to get more carbonated water. I leaned against the laminated wood of the bar, trying to remember what Soul had called the drink so I wouldn’t sound as drunk as I was to the bartender. At least I was aware I was intoxicated; I could be worst. I waited for the bartender to turn back my way. As she turned and saw me, I finally remembered what Soul had said, Seltzer water. 

“Can I get a seltzer water?” I said as clearly as I could when she came over.

She nodded. “Of course, hon. Blue hair’s tab?”

I nodded. 

She set a glass in front of me, filling it with a hose before sliding it toward me and heading back to the other side of the bar.

I felt a hand slide rather low across my back then, in my haze I assumed it was Soul and turned toward the person not resisting the touch, only to realize that Soul’s soul was much too far away for him to have his hand on me and to come eye to eye with a dark haired man, who was leaning rather close to me.

“Come on, you’ve got to be drinking something a little stronger than water.” The man said, his hand slipping lower. 

“I’m good.” I started to back out of his grip but tripped on a bar stool, giving him the chance to use my disbalance to pull me closer to him. 

“Careful doll, wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.” 

“Get off me.” I was starting to get irritated, where did he get off acting like he knew me, but my voice didn’t come out as aggressively as I wanted it to. The alcohol masking most of my anger. 

“Don’t be like that, let me get you a drink.”

“I’m here with someone.” I said coldly, stepping backwards again, but his grip on me didn’t loosen; his hand finally falling on my ass. Now I was mad. 

Without thinking I attempted to punch him with my free hand, but I was too drunk to aim and missed, as he dodged me easily, only causing him to laugh. Although it caught the bartender’s attention. I saw her walk back my way out of the corner of my eye. 

“I don’t see them. You wouldn’t be lying, would you?” The man’s face pulled tight as his eyes ran down my body. I set my drink down, preparing to strangle the man right then and there, when another voice interrupted from behind me. 

“No. She wouldn’t.” Soul’s voice was frozen over. A level of anger I hadn’t heard before, didn’t even know he could accomplish. 

Soul’s hands pulled me back out of the man’s grasp and behind his body protectively. My fingers gripping the back on his shirt. The fabric almost like silk beneath my fingertips. 

In the next moment Soul punched the man right in the jowl, sending him sailing to the floor, knocking a few chairs over in the process. 

“What the fuck.” The man spit blood out of his mouth onto the ground. Starting to stand back up, his hands clenched into fist as he stood in front of Soul. The man was taller than Soul, but as he tried intimidating Soul by towering over him, a scythe came in contact with the skin under his chin. 

Soul’s forearm was in weapon form, the dim lighting from above still managing to glint across its surface. 

The man immediately backed up, hands raised beside his head. “Hey man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“Apologize to her.” Soul didn’t move the blade out from beneath the man’s chin.

“I’m sorry, hon.”

“Her name’s Maka.” Soul’s voice was sharper than his scythe.

“Maka, I’m sorry.” The scythe crept closer to the man’s chin. “I’m real sorry.” His voice lost all sense of haughtiness.

The scythe disappeared; Soul’s arm returning to it’s severely less threatening state. “Leave.”

The man didn’t need to be told twice, he was away from Soul and heading to the front door in the next second. 

I looked at the bartender; she nodded at Soul and acted like she didn’t see anything. The only people paying attention were those at the bar, and the look on their faces said they didn’t want to find Soul’s scythe against their throat next. 

“Are you okay?” Soul turned to me. 

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Why in the Death are you apologizing.”

“I don’t know; I feel guilty. I shouldn’t have drank so much.” Otherwise his ass would’ve been on the floor. I didn’t like being helpless, didn’t like someone else’s hand on my ass. 

Soul’s eyes softened. “Don’t be an idiot.” His finger wiped a tear off my face that I didn’t know was there. “You told him to get off you. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve drank; he should’ve listened regardless.”

He smiled at me gently. I slid my arms around him, burying my face against his chest for a moment, letting the woodsy smell of him comfort me. 

His arms slid around me to. “You don’t always have to be on guard you know, I’m here too.” 

I felt his lips on top of my head before I pulled back. 

He brushed a few strands of hair that had fallen lose off my face before grabbing my drink from the bar. “It’s your night off, have fun.”

I nodded, taking his hand as we walked back to the table. 

BlackStar and Tsubaki were very wrapped up in one another when we got back. She was practically in his lap. 

“I thought you were going to get more shots?” BlackStar said as we neared.

“Shit. I forgot.” Soul said as I slid in the booth, the leathery texture sticking to my thighs unpleasantly. He set my drink down watching me sit, before he headed back over to the bar. 

Tsubaki tried to put a little more space between her and BlackStar, but he wouldn’t let her. 

“Maka we’re dating.” BlackStar said loudly. “So, tell Tsubaki to quit trying to climb out of my lap to hide it.”

I found myself laughing as Tsubaki blushed, deciding to take Soul’s advice, deciding to have fun—pushing any thoughts of the man from my mind. 

“Tsubaki it’s fine, just sit in his lap.” I said, her blush only growing darker. 

BlackStar started making a string of inappropriate comments, each one only making Tsubaki’s blush deepen. I finished the beer I’d left on the table, before drinking the seltzer water, wondering what was taking Soul so long. 

I groped around for his soul with mine, and felt the tether pull me toward him. He was looking toward me as he neared, a tray in his hands. 

He sat down at the table sliding the tray into the middle. BlackStar immediately challenged me to a round three. 

I started to say no, remembering the man from the bar, but Soul spoke up. “I’ve never known you to turn down a challenge.”

He slid a hand onto my thigh possessively, tightening his grip slightly. 

“Alright.” I said turning to BlackStar. “Line ‘em up.”

Tsubaki’s position in his lap greatly slowed him down. I could’ve taken four shots if I wanted to. Soul grabbed it instead, laughing as BlackStar frowned. 

“That’s not fair; I have a handicap.” The way Tsubaki shifted in his lap had him silent in the next moment.

The trumpet and saxophone died down as the night went on, leaving just the piano playing throughout the room. 

“Why don’t-you play Soul?” My words were slurring again, incident forgotten. 

Soul just looked at me like I was crazy.

“You must be drunk Maka if you think Soul is going to get up there and play in a room full of strangers.”

I noticed Tsubaki’s hand drift and BlackStar shut up again. I tried not to think too had on it. 

Soul leaned over to my ear. “I’ll play for you at home.”

“Mmmh.” I said, leaning on his shoulder again. I leaned forward to kiss his neck lightly, intertwining my hand with his in my lap. He was finishing his beer when BlackStar announced they were going to head back. 

Tsubaki leaned all the way across the table to hug me before she left. 

“Do you want to go?” Soul asked after they left. 

“I’d rather sit here a minute.” I said, returning to my position against his side.

I closed my eyes for a moment against his shoulder as Soul finished his drink. “You’re falling asleep, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m just resting my eyes.” 

“You sound like my grandmother.”

“Hey.” I said, sitting up, finding his face much closer to mine than I had expected it to be. I paused. My mind shifted. “Did I ever tell you how good you look in that shirt?”

Alcohol pushing all shame from my mind, I slid a hand onto his lap. 

“No, you didn’t.” Soul smirked.

“What if I said I wanted to take it off of you?” Alcohol really was a game changer. 

“Then I would say we’re in public.” Soul didn’t let me respond; he leaned forward to kiss me instead. Parting my lips softly with his only for a moment before he pulled back. 

“Can you wait here a moment? I’m going to go close BlackStar’s tab.”

“Mmmhh.” I hummed sliding my hand from his lap, looking around. There were still a few straggles in the club; the pianist playing softer and softer songs like he was trying to get everyone to leave. 

I had an odd feeling like someone was watching me pulling against the alcohol and drowsiness, and I found myself scanning the dark corners of the bar before Soul came back. He offered me a hand, pulling me up out of the booth before leading us out the door. He nodded to the bouncer on the way out. 

As soon as we were outside Soul’s arm went around my waist, before the other knocked my knees out beneath me so he could pick me up bridal style. 

“Soul!” I started to complain but found myself very close to his face again and became distracted by that fact once more.

“You’ve had enough to drink to put a sailor on his ass. I don’t even know how you’re still standing.”

“It’s in my blood.” I said sarcastically, referring to my father.

“Part of me is convinced you could out drink him.” How he got the reference, I’ll never know.

I leaned my head back against his shoulder, alcohol induced drowsiness taking hold of me, pretty much content to fall asleep and just let him carry me back, but then I saw it again.

Two yellow eyes peering out from a shadow, the slightest amount of smoke unspooling into the air. I hadn’t told him the last time, should I now? He’s your partner, I thought. 

“Soul.” I said my tone changing abruptly with the decision. “Turn around really slowly and tell me if you see that.”

“Maka what’re you talking about?” Soul spoke as quietly as I had. 

“Just turn like you’re going to go down that street and look behind you casually.”

He listened, taking the next turn and turning his head like he was just trying to shift his hair out of his face. Then he stilled, before recovering his composure, walking again; his pace picking up slightly. It didn’t follow us. 

“You saw it too?” I asked. “It’s not following now.”

“Yes.” 

“That’s not the first time I’ve seen it. I think she’s just watching us.”

“You saw it before? When?” Soul looked at my face, eyes crinkling in worry, wrinkles forming on his forehead. 

“When we went on that date, when you found me in the alley.”

“You followed Lykos’ magic into an alley? Why didn’t you tell me before?” His voice rose an octave. “Maka what was your plan if the wolf attacked?”

“Run?” I said meekly. 

Soul took a deep breath. “What am I going to do with you.”

I leaned up to kiss the bottom edge of his jaw, my arms encircling his neck. 

“I thought you weren’t going to hide things from me.” He stated.

“I’m not the only one holding out here. You don’t tell me everything either.”

“It’s different.”

“Is it? Why won’t you tell me what you dream about?”

We were entering the apartment at this point and he set me down, keeping his hands on my hips from behind me as we walked up the stairs in silence. 

He finally answered as we walked back into the apartment. “Maka, I have nightmares about what happened.”

“But I’m right here.”

“I know.” He said, closing the door. He walked to the piano room and sat on the bench absentmindedly, like he was more comfortable there. I followed. 

“But that doesn’t stop that scene from playing over again and again in new and exciting ways.” He continued. 

“What scene?” I asked, sitting beside him.

He put his hands on the keys, playing a melody I didn’t know. “You jumping in front of that wolf. Its teeth sinking into your side. But in my dream-”¬ The song took a darker twist, the music wrapping around me anxiously. “You always die. I try to get you out of the woods, but I never make it in time. All the while she’s laughing.”

I slid my hands over his to stop his playing, so he would look at me. His eyes still tracked every feature on my face except for my eyes. 

“Soul.” I put a hand on his face, stilling his eyes from their movement to focus on mine. “I didn’t die.”

“You could have.”

“No, because you were there; I didn’t die. You got me out.” 

He slid a hand across my stitches over my shirt. “You’re drunk.” He said dismissively. 

“I may be, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m more stubborn than that.”

Soul leaned forward to kiss me before standing up. “Let’s go to bed.”

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I woke up with a splitting headache, and not the kind Soul’s soul wavelength would fix. Soul wasn’t in the room when I woke up, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak, let alone look for him.

Instead I rolled back over, dragging the sheets over my head with a groan, scooting to the side of the bed that smelt like him and burying my face in it. I fell back asleep only to wake up again to the smell of food cooking in the kitchen. 

I was only mildly tempted to get out of bed, the temptation leading me to the ibuprofen and water on the nightstand beside me, which I made quick work of before hiding myself from the daylight back beneath the covers, fully prepared to die there. 

“Maka.” I heard Soul say from the door, but I didn’t move beneath the covers. “I know you’re awake.”

I heard him walk closer, his hand running along the shape of my body through the sheets up to where my hand had a death grip on the comforter above my head. 

“Maka.” He hummed again trying to pry my fingers lose.

“Soul, in all due respect, please fuck off.” I mumbled beneath the sheets.

Soul mocked offense. “And after I went through all this trouble to cook you breakfast.” 

I heard Soul leave the room again and I couldn’t decide if I should get up to apologize, but he came back into the room. This time bringing the smell of food with him.

“Here, Maka.” 

I peeked an eye out above the comforter as he set a plate beside me on the bed.

“It’s too bright in here.”

He walked over to the window to shut the blinds. “Happy?”

“Yes.” I said worming my way into a sitting position to grab the plate of food, it was literally all bacon. “Thank you.”

“I made eggs and biscuits too.”

“No, this is good.”

“Thought so.” He laughed going back to the kitchen.

I ate the bacon faster than my stomach was prepared for and ignored the nausea that followed as I set the plate aside and curled back up beneath the sheets, waiting for the ibuprofen to take any portion of my headache away.

Soul came back in the room. “Do you plan to get out of bed today?”

“No. You told me to take the day off; here I am, taking it off.”

Soul laughed dryly, sitting down, peeling the covers back from my face. I flipped them back only to toss them over Soul, bringing him into my misery. He laughed again as I wrapped my arms around his waist curling around his back to bury my face against him. 

“Maka come here.” He said, peeling my arms lose so I would move and put my head in his lap, instead of hiding behind him. 

His sweatpants were soft against my cheek as he rubbed my back silently.

A moment passed before he spoke again. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you to go for round three with BlackStar.”

“But did I throw up.” I responded.

“No.” He laughed. “Can’t say you did.”

It didn’t take long for me to fall back asleep in his lap. I woke back up to him reading a book above my head. 

I flipped over on my back, looking up at him. “Are you reading?”

“Don’t sound so shocked.” He set the book aside. 

“What were you reading?”

“Something you didn’t finish before we went on our last mission.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“I know.” He smirked. 

“Was I reading it to you?”

“Yes.” He apparently didn’t like the pleased look on my face because he added. “Forcibly.”

“But, now you’re reading it.”

“You left my on a cliff hanger.”

I smiled at him.

“It’s nice talking to you about something other than Lykos and training.”

“Don’t remind me.” I sat up resting my forehead on his shoulder instead. “I didn’t mean to shut you out.” I said more quietly. 

“I know.” Soul wrapped his arms around me. 

“What time is it?” I asked. 

“You don’t want to know.”

“Is it that late?”

He wouldn’t answer and I slid out of his grasp; my head didn’t hurt anymore. “I’m going to take a shower. I’ll figure out what time it is after that.”

It was past five by the time I got out of the shower and put on one of Soul’s shirts I found, too lazy to find a whole outfit. I sat beside Soul on the couch where I found him, leaning against him, debating going back to sleep.

“What do you want to do?”

“Absolutely nothing.” I responded.

He turned on the T.V, laughing again, flipping it to some movie. We spent the rest of the day like that, just being together comfortably. 

The next day when we resonated, we performed witch-hunter with ease. When Lykos’ magic reached him, soul said he didn’t feel a thing.

For some reason, that bothered me.


	6. Lykos

As we entered the last week before we were to leave, I could tell Soul was getting stressed. BlackStar and Tsubaki started joining in on our training sessions, in a poorly hidden attempt to try and settle our nerves, bringing us just three days away from when we were supposed to leave—including today. 

“Tsubaki.” I called while BlackStar was distracting Soul. I needed to talk to her without him hearing.

“Yeah?” She turned to look at me, the black hair of her ponytail wavering with the movement.

“We’re all leaving in three days; Kid hasn’t been here for the past two; and Soul’s starting to not sleep again; at this point I don’t think we need to keep training.” I needed to find a way to keep Soul calm. If nothing else at least it would distract me from my own nerves. 

“You want me to keep BlackStar from inviting ya’ll back here before we leave?”

I nodded, looking at Soul. Tsubaki followed my gaze. 

“He’ll be okay Maka. He has you.”

“I hate asking him to go back there.” I looked back to Tsubaki. 

Tsubaki shook her head. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you really want to go back?”

No. I didn’t want to get anywhere near the witch that did this to my memory. What if she just did it again? I promised Soul I wouldn’t forget him again, but what control did I really have over that. I opened my mouth to respond but couldn’t find the words to voice my train of thought without giving away how the very thought terrified me. 

“You don’t have to act tough for us Maka, any of us.” I knew who she really meant was Soul. 

“He’s stressed enough as it is.” I mumbled.

“You don’t remember this, so I’ll let you in on a secret. You and Soul are similar, you only bottle stuff up when he does. And he only bottles things up when you do.” Tsubaki’s eyes glinted in the light of the falling sun. “Talk to your partner; I’m sure he’s only attempting to hide how he feels in an attempt to not add to your stress.”

“I feel fine.” I said dismissively, but even I didn’t believe me. I couldn’t stop glancing at Soul like he might disappear. 

“Maka you can’t even take your eyes off him to talk to me.” She wasn’t mad, just making an observation.

Soul started to walk our way through the short grass. 

“I’m sorry.” I turned to look at her in an attempt to give her my undivided attention. 

“Don’t be, I know exactly how you feel.” She smiled, pulling me into a hug. 

“I don’t want you to face Lykos either. I love you too.” 

The implication of my words didn’t hit me until Tsubaki responded. “Why don’t you tell him that.”

I blushed as she let go of me, making her way to BlackStar. She called. “I’ll see you in three days.”

Soul heard. “Are they not training with us anymore?”

“No and we’re not either.” 

He looked alarmed at my words, so I continued. “Soul, I know you think no one can tell, but I can clearly see you’re stressed. The black circles under your eyes are coming back.”

I raised my hand to his face to rub my thumb under his eye gently. He set his hand on top of mine silently. 

“I’m scared too, you know.” I added quietly. 

“I can’t hide anything from you, can I?” He slid his hands around my waist pulling me closer. 

“Not except for the fact that you love me, if your story is to be believed.” I smiled slyly, sliding my arms around his neck, looking behind him to check if Tsubaki and BlackStar had left. They had. 

He brought his lips just in front of mine, a smirk playing across his face. “Do you not believe me?”

“I think I could be convinced.” I said bringing my lips to his, kissing him slowly before he pulled back, teasing me. 

“If I didn’t know any better, I would say you’re trying to distract me.” 

“Is it working?”

“Why don’t you give it another try?”

I slid my hands up into his hair, dragging my nails across his scalp. I placed a kiss on the side of his jowl, trailing down towards his chin. His fingers tightening on my side as I finally kissed him again, his lips parting with need as he deepened the kiss. 

“I’m scared of losing you again.” He said against my mouth as we parted, his eyes still closed as he spoke. 

I love you too, I thought; but for some reason I couldn’t get myself to voice it. Instead my soul reached out to his, tightening the tether. “You never lost me; I was just asleep for a little while.” I smiled at him, knowing what he was going to say.

“You know what I mean.” His eyes opened; the reds of his irises seemingly darker as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. 

“I know.” I smiled weakly at him. “I’m afraid of losing my memory again. I’m scared I’ll take one look at Lykos and forget everything. I don’t want to forget you again; I don’t want to leave you again.”

He rested his forehead against mine for a moment in silence. “I can’t lose you again.”

“Soul, if something happens again, promise me you’ll be okay.”

“I can’t Maka.”

“Don’t torture yourself again. I’ll do everything I can to get back to you, I promise; but don’t torture yourself.”

Soul shook his head looking away, he took a step back from me dropping his hands from my sides. 

I grabbed his hand. “Soul, I’m serious. Take care of yourself too. I can’t stand the idea of you sitting beside me like that again, not eating, not sleeping. Don’t get me wrong, I want you with me; I just—” 

His fingers intertwined with mine. “I know. I’ll try. But promise me something too; promise me you won’t throw yourself in front of Lykos again. I’ll be with you; that’s what I’m for.”

“As long as you’re with me, I promise.” I evaded slightly. 

Soul narrowed his eyes. “I will be.”

“Soul?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t feel anything at all? When we resonate, or now?” My freehand found his shirt, tugging him back towards me—in the distance a bird flew down from a tree, cocking its head towards us. 

“No. I don’t feel her magic at all.” Soul complied, turning his body back towards me as he freed his hand from my grip. “Here.” 

He held his hands between us, allowing his finger to turn into a scythe so he could lightly cut his palm. A trickle of blood seeped from the cut, no sign of smoke escaping from the wound. Still, it seemed odd to me. My brow furrowed. “Doesn’t it seem odd to you?”

“You said yourself it’s not like Medusa’s black blood, it’s different.” Soul ran his hand across my forehead trying to sooth the wrinkles. “Don’t overthink it.”

His soul danced a little, wavering slightly like he was trying to keep it from reacting to his words. 

“You’re not saying something. I can tell.” 

“I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it at all, but regardless, we have to resonate to fight Lykos.”

“There’s something I’ve been wondering, after the wolf attacked me you said she just left. Why would she do that unless that had been her goal, but how could she have known we would come after her—maybe.” I stopped talking abruptly.

“What is it Maka?” Soul’s eyes locked onto mine.

“Maybe it wasn’t her goal, but it gave her an idea. Medusa didn’t control Crona through the blood exactly, but Lykos also isn’t playing by the same rules here. Those wolves, what if they aren’t magic? What if they’re real wolves, what if she’s just controlling them through magic?”

“But they don’t look real?”

“They don’t, but when I bleed smoke comes out of me. The wolves vectored Lykos’ magic to me second hand; but the wolves, they must’ve gotten their magic directly from the source. How would we have anyway to know how potent that could be? Who’s to say that magic wouldn’t constantly be overflowing from their bodies? What if when the wolf vectored the magic to me, she got an idea—an idea better than her original plan?”

“What would that be though?”

“I don’t know. We killed her sisters, but if her whole goal was revenge, she would’ve just killed us when we met her in the woods—why bother this round about way to mess with us. So, revenge can’t be what she wants. It just wouldn’t make sense.”

I started pacing away from Soul, and then back again thinking out loud. “The treaty?”

“She is violating the treaty, but Kid never found any evidence of her having followers—of her having anyone else breaking the treaty as well.”

“Why would she? None of the other witches have a grudge to hold against the DWMA. Maybe she needs to get them on her side.” I said. 

“She would need some kind of display, a reason for the other witches not to trust us.” Soul watched me pace; the sun all but gone now.

“I wish we had a way to catch one of those wolves.” I complained, trying to keep my mind from turning down the path it was heading. What if she could control me, with enough of her magic?

“If those wolves did vector the magic to you, maybe it’s too weak to be vectored a third time.” Soul commented and my stomach dropped. 

“What if she knows that. If she realized the wolves can’t vector the full force of her magic onward, maybe she’s luring us back to—” 

“To vector more magic into you.”

“Soul. When I originally woke up, Lykos spoke to me. She said something about trying ‘another approach.’ Like holding me in a coma wasn’t doing what she hoped it would.”

Soul ran his hands across his face into his hair. “But we don’t know for certain about the vectoring of her magic, that could all be wrong.”

“I don’t think it is. When she lured me into the alley, it was like my blood was humming for me to follow.” If that hum was stronger, could she control me?

“She won’t get a second chance to vector magic into you.” Soul said coldly. 

“I think we need to be careful, all of us, about Lykos’ wolves touching us. We should tell Tsubaki and BlackStar, even if it’s just a theory.”

“I can call BlackStar, but we should get heading back.” Soul gestured to the lack of the sun in the sky, the moon directing its eerie gaze at us.

“I wonder how Crona is.” I found myself saying out loud. 

Soul just smiled softly at me. “I miss Crona too. Come on.” Soul held his hand out for mine. “Let’s go home Maka.”

After we ate Soul called BlackStar while I showered, although he didn’t seem too hopeful that the warning got through to him when I got out. BlackStar was convinced no one could lay a hand on him to begin with. 

Now we were both in bed, although neither of us were sleeping: Soul laid staring at the ceiling in silence with his hand possessively placed on my thigh, while I sat beside him, watching his face as he had a conversation with himself in his head—muscles twitching in his face every so often.

His hand slid farther up my leg absent mindedly, before traveling back down, his fingers continuing their lazy path back and forth as I broke the silence.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“What you said earlier about the wolves vectoring magic. It could be why she led you into the alley in the first place, or maybe she just wanted to see if she could.” 

“Soul.”

He turned to look at me. 

“You’re never going to fall asleep if you keep worrying about Lykos.” 

“I know.”

“Maybe you should worry about more imminent matters.” I said attempting to distract him. 

Soul raise an eyebrow. “What’s more imminent than three days?”

I smirked at him, standing up on my knees to reposition myself—straddling him. I sat back on his hips; the bed covers between us. “I’m honestly surprised my father hasn’t burst into our apartment yet, demanding I come with him. It could happen at any moment.”

I leaned down, my hands sliding up his bare chest. 

“You’re right. Your father is infinitely more dangerous.” A playful smile danced across his face. He slid his hands up my thighs slowly. “Come closer.”

I complied, bringing my lips to his so he could kiss me. It wasn’t the kiss I expected, it was sweet, loving, and slow where I had expected rush, heat and desire. 

“I can’t imagine what he would have to say about his daughter trying to seduce me.” He whispered teasingly against my lips. 

A blush crept across my face, which I hid against his chest—my ear against his heart. 

“Do you remember when Blair bought herself lingerie with the money your dad gave her for your birthday present?”

I sat back up. “What? No?”

“She did, and then she gave it to you and said it was from your dad. The look on your face.” Soul started laughing, his body shaking beneath me and I found myself laughing at the sound.

I rolled off Soul, laying on the bed beside him as we both laughed. 

“Maka I love you.” He turned his head to look at me. “I’ve always loved you. You’re it for me. That’s why I’m so afraid of losing you.” He reached his hand out to my face. 

“Maka, there’s no one else for me, you’re it.” 

“You say that now.”

“No. I say that always.” Soul smiled timidly, before he moved, shifting to his knees—or knee.

My head didn’t hurt as I curled into the everlasting warmth that was Soul. “Try to sleep tonight, okay?”

Soul hummed confirmation into my hair. 

When I woke up Soul was gone, a note on the nightstand telling me he went to the store, although I wish it had included at what time. It’d been a while since I’d been alone, and I found myself wearing Soul’s leather jacket around the apartment; silence not feeling comforting for once in my life.

It was just past ten in the morning when the phone rang from the kitchen. My first instinct was to let it ring, not knowing who would be calling; but then I started to wonder if it was Soul and I made my way over to the phone, taking it from the wall.

Before I could get any words out a male voice rang out. “Hello? Soul? What’s happening; I just called the hospital and they said Maka was discharged weeks ago. Is everything alright; why haven’t you called me?”

“Wes?” I couldn’t imagine who else would be talking to Soul like this, and when I thought about it, they sounded similar—Wes and Soul. They both had the same cadence to their voice, even if Wes’ was a bit lighter. 

The phone was silent for a moment. 

“Maka?” Wes waited on the other end. 

I wasn’t sure what to say, if I should tell him I had amnesia? “Yeah, it’s me.”

“Are you, okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine but—” I had to tell him, how could I not?

“But what? Where’s Soul; is he okay? Why haven’t you called?” Wes’ voice didn’t sound any less confused, or panicked.

“Soul’s okay too, he’s just at the store; I’m not sure when he’ll be back. But Wes, I don’t remember anything.”

“Well I’m sure that’s normal. I mean you’ve been in a coma for months; I can’t imagine you would remember the event that—”

“No. I don’t remember anything. But it’s not medical amnesia, it’s complicated. I—”

“That’s why he hasn’t called.” Wes took a breath on the other side of the phone, his voice calming. 

“I told him to call you, but he said it would just make you worry more?”

“Sounds like him. Listen Maka, I want to see you and Soul. I just got off tour; I can get on a plane to Death City.”

“We’re leaving in a couple days.” I said quietly.

“What do you mean you’re leaving? How long have you been out of the hospital?”

“Over a month. We have a mission—”

“Maka you have amnesia how can you possibly be—”

We kept interrupting each other. “It’s complicated.”

Wes was silent. 

“I can have Soul call you when he gets back?” I continued awkwardly. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t remember anything?”

“I only remember the random things that came back to me.”

“Tell me something that you remember.”

I had a feeling I knew what Wes wanted to hear. “I remember the first time Soul told me he loved me, and I misunderstood him at first.” 

Wes laughed quietly. “He liked to never have told you. My little brother would be lost without you. How do you feel about him Maka?”

I didn’t answer immediately causing Wes to continue. “Sorry, that’s not a fair question. Tell him I called, okay? I want to hear from him before you go on some secret mission to save the world.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“I’ll talk to you later Maka. Goodbye.”

“Bye Wes.”

Soul was gone long enough that I resorted to picking up the book he had been reading the other day to distract myself. A few pages in my mind was already recalling the entirety of the plot for me, but I kept going anyway, betting there wasn’t a book in this apartment that I hadn’t read before. I was starting to really wonder where Soul was when the door to the apartment opened. 

“Soul?” I said from the couch as he walked in the door. 

He looked my way, setting some paper bags on the counter. He smiled a shark tooth grin that reached his eyes. “Its been a while since I’ve come home to you with a book on the couch.”

He shrugged his jacket off, tossing it expertly on top of one of the bar stools, yellow sleeves dangling down towards the floor. He walked over to me, leaning on the back of the couch, looking down at me. I sat up as he spoke. “You realize almost everything you’re wearing right now is mine.”

I set the book down on the table, snuggling further into his jacket. “It’s comfortable too. Where were you?”

“I went to get a few groceries, and some stuff for the mission. Also, I wanted to talk to Stein. He agrees with you about the wolves.”

Soul didn’t look particularly happy about the fact, taking his hands from his pocket and crossing his arms as he spoke. 

I leaned my head back on the couch arm behind me. “Soul, I don’t want to think about Lykos.” 

I watched the clouds drifts across the sky above our skylight as Soul replied. “I know; I don’t either. I just wanted his opinion, if he had any ideas. He thinks we can use Majin hunt on the wolves.”

“What about your piano playing, would that disrupt the magic flow?” 

“He doesn’t think so.”

I nodded my head against the couch, not looking at Soul. “You remember us before this, do you think we can beat her like this?”

“There is no ‘like this,’ there’s nothing wrong with you Maka.”

“Do I fight as well as I did before?” I watched a plane as it faded in and out above the clouds.

“You don’t need to compete with yourself Maka; you’re still you.”

What happens if we lose?

Soul’s soul didn’t waver as he said. “We’re ready Maka. I wouldn’t take you back there if I thought you would lose, even if I had to restrain you.”

He laughed a little and I sat up, looking at him. “Why’re you laughing?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head

“Soul.” I watched his face carefully. “Wes called while you were gone.”

Soul stood up from his laxed position against the couch; his face smoothing into a mask. “What did he say?”

“I think you should call him.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Yeah, he knows I don’t remember.”

“So, he didn’t say… anything?”

“No.”

Soul looked away, sighing loudly. “I shouldn’t have put it off this long. I got you a watermelon, if you’re hungry.”

Soul walked into the kitchen picking the phone up from the wall. He started to walk towards the bedroom and then paused, looking at me. “I’m going to—” 

He stopped talking, so I nodded.

He walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. I didn’t try and eavesdrop. 

The rest of our time ran out too fast. I spent most of the next two days finishing reading the book to Soul before we left this time, not wanting to leave him on a cliffhanger again. Neither Soul nor BlackStar owned a vehicle convenient for four people to travel in, so we all agreed to meet in the small town near the woods we knew Lykos would be in.

The whole ride there I couldn’t get close enough to Soul on the bike. 

Somehow BlackStar and Tsubaki managed to beat us there, although they said they hadn’t been waiting long. It was past noon as we all began our way down the skinny dirt path to the forest outside of the town—the sounds of a river coursed in the distance.

No one spoke outside of BlackStar’s constant monologue. His unwavering lack of concern would normally settle my nerves, but with each step closer to the forest my heart only beat faster. Soul took my hand when the trees came into view; the trunks coming together creating a seeming gap free wall at the forest edge. 

“So Maka, where’s the witch?” BlackStar announced unceremoniously as we all stared into the utter black of the forest—like the trees were too thick to let any light in. 

My gut twisted like a hooked worm waiting for a fish to bite.

I was standing in front of the same woods, only it was just before morning—the sun still yet to make an appearance. A wolf brushed against my leg, smoke curling from its body and around mine as it walked into the woods, telling me to follow. It disappeared among the shadow of the trees as I took a step forward, dew covered grass clinging to my feet desperately as I moved. 

I glanced back toward the tent where I knew Soul was still asleep, just once, before the forest swallowed me in its shadows.

“Maka?” Soul glanced at me, his voice soft. Nothing was holding his white hair back as he spoke, the wind blew through it dragging it down across his face. 

Why did I follow a wolf? 

I took a step forward silently and Soul followed me like a magnet. Then another. And then I was in-between the trees that seemed to loom even taller over me. The ground was mostly covered in moss and fallen tree limbs snapping beneath my boots. I was only a few steps into the woods, and I couldn’t see the sun, it might as well have been midnight. The trees stood absurdly straight, leaving no clear path between them. My blood humming like phantom fingers running across my skin, directing my eyes further into the woods. I tried to sense her soul but found nothing. 

Soul put a firm hand on my shoulder, preventing me from going any further. “Maka, what’s the plan?”

“I think I can find her, my blood, it’s reacting to her magic like it did in the alley. It’s faint but I think I can use it like a metal detector. Soul, turn into your weapon form, just in case.”

Soul nodded, even the light of him shifting was swallowed by the trees like a black hole. Tsubaki followed suit. 

“Lead the way Maka.” BlackStar encouraged from behind me.

“BlackStar we don’t want Lykos to know we’re coming; we need to stay quiet.” Tsubaki chimed in from weapon form. 

“She’ll never see me coming.” BlackStar agreed, crouching down into the shadow of the trees behind me. 

“Breathe Maka.” Soul said quietly, his face glancing up at me in the metal’s surface. 

I nodded, following the hum of my blood deeper into the forest, my grip tightening on Soul’s shaft. 

We could’ve been in the forest for minutes or hours, time became irrelevant amongst the trees—it was like being in a casino with no clocks to tell the time by. The whisper in my blood grew louder and fell quiet without warning like we were above or below Lykos walking in permanent circles. No animals ran through the moss or along the tree limbs; no birds sang songs to their mates in the distance; the only sound was my feet perpetually breaking sticks no matter how hard I tried to avoid them. 

It was like finding a needle in a haystack. 

“This is impossible. I follow a trail and it suddenly drops off or disappears.” I complained loudly, having given up on being quiet twenty broken sticks ago. 

I waited for BlackStar to make a retort, but he remained silent. I turned around in surprise to see what he was doing; he smiled at me, turning his face into something devilish just before the wind blew through the trees around me, brushing into his body which collapsed into smoke, falling heavy on the ground like a shadow before the wind blew the black tendrils away. 

“Soul. Where’s BlackStar? How did I not notice him disappear? I should’ve realized his soul was gone and Tsubaki. Where’s Tsubaki? Soul?” 

Soul was gone from my hands in the next moment, the disappearance of the weapon behind my fingers only causing my heartrate to accelerate further. The humming in my blood picked up its pace with my heart, only drawing my attention further from reality as panic took hold of me. My breath wracking against my ribs as I turned to try and find Soul. 

“Maka.” Two arms ensnared themselves around my waist pulling me immediately against his body. The smell of Soul landing over me like a blanket as my hands shook against their position pinned between our bodies. “You have to calm down. BlackStar and Tsubaki will be okay.”

“We have to find them Soul.”

“Maka, listen to me. We can’t even find Lykos in these woods with you as a metal detector, there’s no way we will find BlackStar and Tsubaki unless she wants us too. We need to find Lykos, but you have to keep your cool.” Soul spoke slowly, keeping his voice paced and even. “She’s just trying to scare you.”

I tried to let his words sink in, digging my fingers into a death grip on his shirt—afraid he might disappear too.

“The best thing we can do for them is find Lykos. There’s only one witch in these woods Maka, and there’s no minion that can take BlackStar down, mirages or not.”

“Soul, is that what happened last time we were here?”

“I followed you through the woods all the way to Lykos, where you turned to smoke right in front of me.”

“I remembered something right before we came into the woods.” I said into his chest, refusing to let any space between us. “When I went into the woods, a wolf led me. She didn’t trick me; I went willingly.”

“You don’t know that for sure. We still don’t know what happened before that.” Soul loosened his grip on me, so he could look at my face. “Don’t start doubting yourself; I trust you with my life Maka.”

“Soul I want to tell you something, just in case.” I looked up at his face; his eyes creased slightly with worry. “I love you Soul; even without all my memories, I love you.”

“Maka.” Soul’s face twisted, a sad smile contorting his face before he rested his forehead on mine lightly. “Don’t say that like a goodbye.”

A lone wolf howling interrupted from the distance, followed by the synchronized baying of a pack. 

“She’s calling us.” I froze against Soul.

“Then we’ll answer together.” Soul stepped away from me, taking a firm grip on my hand—leading the way to the howling of the wolves. 

My blood, Lykos’ magic, eerily silent in my veins. 

Soul walked a step ahead of me through the trees, his hand firmly in mine, following the sounds of the wolves. As we got closer, the sound suddenly came to a halt like a cricket trying to hide its location. We paused, and then the hum grew unbearably loud in my veins, distracting me from my thoughts like a constant buzzing in my head. 

“Soul, we’re close. I think you should change back.” 

He looked at me like he was going to protest, like he was trying to form the argument in his head—some reason why it was okay for him to wait.

“Do you want me to jump in front of a wolf again.” I threatened lightly, returning the glare he gave me. 

Soul listened, his hand turning to the metal of the shaft of his scythe in the next moment—the blade managing to glint even in the absence of sunlight. I took a few more steps through the trees which thinned unexpectedly into a clearing, a clearing full of wolves and BlackStar. 

There was no sunlight to shine down into the clearing, but the moon did plenty to illuminate the area. So much time had passed silently in the woods. BlackStar was going toe to toe with a pack of wolves, one of which was larger, set off from the rest. 

BlackStar clashed in the air with a streaming body of smoke, the wolf letting out a guttural growl as they collided. BlackStar landed back on the ground as silent as a lion, ready to parry the next onslaught of teeth. The bodies of wolves swirled around him like a fire, smoke rolling behind them as they moved. 

“Took you long enough Maka! I’m such a big star I found the pack in no time. HA HA HA.” He laughed across the clearing as a wolf yelped, retreating farther back from him. 

“Maka, there’s a cave up ahead; we think Lykos is in there. We can hold these wolves off; you and Soul go on ahead.” Tsubaki added. 

I ran my eyes across the clearing, finding a rocky outcropping just among the start of the tree line on the far right—the mouth of a cave opening to great me. I looked back to BlackStar, making sure he wasn’t bluffing before I headed towards the cave entrance. 

The large wolf followed me with its golden eyes, which were only visible when he moved his head, causing the smoke to drift away from his irises. It lowered its head, pacing slowly through the tall grass toward the cave entrance as well, cutting off our advance. 

“Soul.”

“Yeah Maka.”

“I want to know if Stein was right, if I was right.” I looked to the blade of the scythe and Soul nodded. 

I braced my boots in the dirt, preparing to charge at the wolf. The wolf prepared as well, lowering its hunches preparing to pounce; its ghostly body barely visible against the black of the mouth of the cave—just the glint of its eyes gave its location away. 

“Let’s go, soul resonance!” I took a step forward into my charge, Soul’s scythe form shifting shape beside me, jutting out around my body into Majin hunt. My soul wavelength lapped between us like a weightless ocean tide as I tuned out the feel of Lykos’ magic trying to worm its way to Soul; I had to focus on the wolf. On getting this right.

The wolf leapt, preparing to meet me in the air where it instead sailed straight into the swing of my scythe—Majin hunt dispelling the curling smoke from the wolf’s body like a sudden gust of wind. 

The wolf fell to the ground with a thud, its white coat stark against the ground as its eyes dilated slowly. It blinked trying to adjust to its new reality. 

“Maka, it worked.”

“But that also means I was right, Lykos did vector her magic to control the wolves.”

“And she’s trying to do the same thing to you.” Soul finished my thought. 

I sensed a warm flicker beside me like a lit match. “I can sense its soul now; I couldn’t before when it was covered with all the smoke.”

The wolf didn’t move from its spot readjusting on the ground. 

“Let’s head inside.” I said as I stepped around the wolf, Soul’s blade returning to its normal size as I stopped passing my soul wavelength to him.

For some reason with each step I took farther into the cave, my boots landing audibly on the damp rock floor, the easier it became to see. The rock walls on either side getting farther and farther apart the deeper I walked within the cave—Soul silent in my hands; his soul uneasy. 

“Be careful Maka, there’s a lot of shadows in here.”

I tightened my grip on him as the cave roof suddenly disappeared, opening up into a cavern. In the center of the dome of rock was a break in the cavern roof—moonlight teetering through, reflecting off the damp rock surfaces like ocean water.

Lykos stood in the middle of the chamber smiling sadistically, two fang like canines escaping over her lips with the expression. “You really do want your memories back, don’t you? So very bold, waltzing right up to the witch who could have so easily ended both your lives before.”

She threaded the silver streak of her hair through her fingers, twirling it a few times as her golden eyes shone dimly in the secondhand moonlight. She tucked the hair behind her ear slowly. “I have to say I’ve grown attached to you Maka. All this time I’ve spent in your head, or well, in your memories. I bet I even know more about you than you do yourself.”

Lykos took a step forward, the heel of her boot clicking against the ground. I tensed near the cavern entrance, bringing Soul in front of my body, watching the ever shifting shadows—shadows that were full of curling smoke, tendrils of black twirling up off the rock like rising steam. Lykos continued her lazy pace forward, bringing her out of the light filtering down from the cracks in the rock roof. 

“Would you like a memory back?” She held her hand out towards me, still multiple feet away. I resisted the urge to step back from her, my fingers tightening around the metal of Soul’s scythe form, nervous moisture pooling around my fingers. “I think you might like it.”

Lykos winked lasciviously.

“Maka.” Soul said with warning in his voice; he didn’t want me to step forward. 

My blood began to hum again like roaring water in my veins. I couldn’t get a read on her. I took one step back, and Lykos almost purred with laughter. “Maybe you’re not so bold, Maka. You don’t have to touch me.” She snapped her fingers. 

Hot breath panted across my cheek, leaving trails of condensation across my skin, quickly pulling me from my already unstable sleep. I never slept well in tents or outside of my apartment. I always felt too exposed, especially when I was on a mission. When my eyes opened, I came face to face with the eyes of a wolf, hidden beneath the shapelessness of smoke. 

I didn’t move.

Lykos. 

The wolf turned its face from me to the right, revealing the lines of its snout beneath all the smoke with the movement. I followed its gaze to Soul, and for once in my life found myself cursing how deeply he slept. 

Another wolf stood over Soul, his face utterly at peace while the wolf opened its jaw wide, teeth appearing inside a mouth of smoke only for a moment before it repositioned itself at Soul’s throat. Cool sweat slid down my neck. 

I looked back to the first wolf, which shook its head from side to side, barely revealing its facial features amidst the disturbance of smoke. It took a few steps back from me, exiting the mouth of the tent before turning its head back to me, waiting for me to follow. I looked once more at Soul. I wanted to touch him, any part of him. To wake him up. He would be okay once he shifted. 

But the wolf above him eyed me, a low snarl escaping its throat when I moved. I couldn’t risk it. 

I followed the first wolf from the tent, without changing, without shoes. I followed the wolf into the woods in just Soul’s shirt—my soul reaching back to his, trying to pull him from his sleep as the other wolf exited the tent, following me into the woods. 

“Soul, I didn’t follow a wolf into woods. Not really.” I couldn’t help the relief I felt; even for all Soul told me to trust myself, I had still been worried. Not knowing it I betrayed him. 

“Maka, on your right.” Soul said tensely—his soul reflecting his voice. 

I jerked my head away from Lykos, a wolf stepped up from the shadows of the cave, pacing to our right—another emerged from the left.

“What is it you want?” I turned my eyes back to Lykos.

She ran her index finger across her lip before she responded; the same skintight black shirt from my dream glued to her body. “Normalcy. The DWMA, you, killed all my sisters and then rolled the red carpet out for your Lord, who handed us a treaty like we were blessed to even be spared. I don’t want a treaty.” 

The wolves held their position on either side of me and Soul. “You don’t want revenge. If you did, I would be dead.”

“You’re right, I don’t. My sisters were all thieves, too busy trying to be the first to think more than one step ahead—constantly playing right into your hands. I want freedom. I want to be Queen. I want to have fun playing with all the children Lord Death sends to kill me.” She swirled her fingers in the air, smoke leaking out like a writhing snake, making its way towards me slowly. 

“You need me to get the witches on your side.”

“Very good Maka. The witches are stupid; they’re all happy to pander to a Lord child’s wishes if it means they don’t have to fear for their souls. I don’t care about my soul. The wolves are good pets, but you. When you jumped in front of that wolf and my magic seeped into you so smoothly; I had no idea you would be compatible. Not everyone is. Soul isn’t. But you, you soaked up my magic so nicely.” A smile broke across her face.

“I thought I could keep threading magic into you, if you were unconscious.” She turned her eyes to the weapon in my hands, pointed one clawed finger towards Soul. “But you wouldn’t leave.”

She walked to the side, toward one of the wolves along the wall—stroking her fingers through its smoke covered hair. “So, I decided to try something else: if I could just lure you to me then I could seed my magic into you firsthand. Once I have you as obedient as a puppy, and I tell you to go kill a witch or two.” 

Lykos raised her hand, observing her nails. “I’m sure they would all be ready to stand behind a gorgon sister again.” Lykos looked past her nails at us.

I heard the wolf on the right of me leap a moment too late; Lykos knowing full well she had my full attention. The wolf’s teeth sunk into my calve before I could even turn to see it, a gasp escaping my mouth as Soul shouted. I sunk the blade of his scythe into the body of the wolf in the next moment—its body slumping to the ground within a cloud of black, impossible to see the damage. 

“Never mind one wolf, I have plenty.” Lykos continued to pet the wolf at her side. 

I felt something brush against my leg, bringing my attention back from Lykos as I watched in horror as tendrils of smoke from the dead wolf at my feet twisted their way into my bloodstream through the fresh teeth marks in my leg. “Soul.”

“Maka we need to focus on Lykos. We don’t know how many wolves she has; we can’t plan on taking them all out.” We don’t know how much time you have; that’s what Soul wasn’t saying. 

I stepped back from the wolf, legs of smoke falling to the ground from the black blood drooling down my leg. 

“By the way, I hope you didn’t think that was my alpha outside the cave.” She laughed like windchimes echoing against the rock. Two more golden eyes appearing in the puddle of smoke beneath her and the wolf at her side. 

“That can’t be a real wolf.” I said in disbelief as a wolf stood amongst the shadows at Lykos’ left side; it was tall enough to look her in the eyes. 

“He was, before I filled him with black blood; Medusa may have stolen my research, but she had an interesting idea, putting a weapon in Crona’s blood.” The smaller wolf followed her as she stepped back into the shadows against the cave wall, only her golden eyes reflecting from the darkness as the second wolf stepped toward us. 

It paced into the center of the cave, the light from the moon easily revealing its body beneath the smoke that sizzled from its skin. Its shape was not defined by wind blowing smoke back; rather smoke enunciated its shape, not enough smoke emitted from its body to hide its legs or ears as they moved and twitched. 

“If this wolf is like Crona, Majin hunt isn’t going to work on it.” Soul started analyzing the creature as it stalked back and forth in the moonlight.

“Oh, and Maka, here’s a memory you might not like.” She didn’t snap her fingers this time, as every time we fought Crona came flooding back to me—including the time I delved into the madness. 

I shook the thought from my head, how Soul’s weapon form took damage from Ragnorok’s screaming. She was just trying to distract me; we didn’t know yet if the wolf would attack the same way—at the end of the day it was an animal. “I think we should try Majin hunt.”

“You’re right to be suspicious. It’s true, the wolf can’t attack with screams like Crona and Ragnorok could, although, he does something better.” Lykos said from the shadows as the wolf opened its mouth, a howl began building in its throat, a deep sound that crashed forward into the cave when it finally began its song. 

The sound wrapped around me like someone banging a drum in my ears, setting my brain on fire and stripping all the nerves from behind my eyes as I screamed. Soul clattering to the floor with a metallic clang as I gripped at my head, trying to block my ears—any form of thought incapable of forming in my head. 

“The howl doesn’t seem to have the same effect on the other wolves as it does on you. Although I think this effect works quite nicely. Don’t you?”

I could barely register her words, much less the feel of another wolf tearing into my leg over the obscene pressure in my head. I wasn’t even sure how I was still awake. 

Then Soul was in front of me, eyes wild as his forearm turned to a scythe that he promptly drove into the wolf currently latched onto my leg, which fell off like a burnt tick onto the ground.

I went down with the wolf, curling in on myself like a dying bug as the pain continued to sear my brain, and then, the howling stopped. The pain washed away from my head like it had never even been there. 

“Maka.” Soul was yelling in front of me as I looked up at him; his back was to me, both of his arms ending in scythes. “Maka are you alright? You have to get up.”

I looked past Soul at the alpha wolf, which was currently snarling viciously, slinging its head from side to side trying to dislodge the much smaller white wolf from its throat. The flicker of its soul was no longer a small flame, but a burning fire as it tore at the larger wolf’s throat. I grabbed Soul’s arm; his forearm turning back to flesh as his hand grabbed my arm as well, pulling me back up off the ground without ever turning around. 

“Is that?” I asked, eyes still locked on the blur of white dangling from the alpha. The white wolf’s back feet finally connected with the rock floor and it used the chance to yank the larger wolf’s head down, tearing a piece of flesh off within its mouth that immediately evaporated as smoke into the air. 

“The wolf from outside, yeah.” Soul answered, his eyes still locked on Lykos. 

The white wolf jumped backwards avoiding the lunge of the alpha, its feet silent on the ground. 

Lykos snarled from her position hidden in the shadow, stalking forward into the opening flanked by three wolves. 

“Soul.” I held my hand out to him and in the next moment I was holding a scythe again. The three wolves parted around Lykos like water before charging forward, their feet loud against the puddles in the crevices of the rock floor. 

“Let’s go, soul resonance.” I called to Soul, barely having the time to feel the shift in amplitude of our soul wavelength before the bright white light of Majin hunt was coming in contact with two leaping wolves; both of which fell to the ground in the next moment, absent of smoke. The third however, dove low missing the blade of the scythe; I tried to dodge to the side, but when I put my weight on my left leg, the wound there gushed blood shooting pain up my leg, causing me to fall. The wolf grabbed hold of my right forearm, ripping its head to the side as it pulled my hand free of Soul’s shaft. A small scream escaped my lips as mirrored pain shot up my arm. 

For the third time Lykos’ magic threaded its way into me, running across my skin like a feather. I swirled Soul around with my left arm, bringing the scythe down into the wolf’s neck. It too collapsed onto the ground in smoke; this time black blood pooled with the moisture on the ground, revealing itself outside of the body of smoke. 

A yelp brought my attention back to the alpha and the white wolf, a black paw retracted what looked like raptor talons in the next moment. The white wolf laid on its side with three jagged marks down its chest; it struggled to stand back up, red blood leaking into its fur, staining the white color as it miraculously still managed to dodge the alpha’s next attack. 

I didn’t think the white wolf was going to be able to buy us much more time. I steeled myself, pushing past the pain in my legs as I took a steadying step towards Lykos, who had both of her hands raised, smoke falling from her palms like mini waterfalls onto the ground around her. 

“You haven’t run out of tricks yet?”

“You haven’t realized yet, have you? The smoke isn’t leaking out of the wolves; it’s being poured in and from this distance, I can do the same to you.” Lykos took a step forward into the smoke, disappearing into the ground like she slipped through a portal. 

She could reappear anywhere. 

“Soul I can’t sense where she is. I haven’t been able to sense her soul one time. The smoke, it hides it.”

“Maka back up towards the light.”

I listened, veering closer to where the two wolves were still fighting under the crack in the roof. 

“MAKA DON’T FEAR, BLACKSTAR IS HERE.” BlackStar came running into the cavern, eyes falling onto the two wolves behind me.

Tsubaki was a silent weapon in his hand. 

“BlackStar, Lykos is in here somewhere. Stay out of the shadows.” I warned. 

“I’m such a big star I don’t even cast a shadow!” BlackStar continued to yell as he neared my position, seemingly unharmed from his fight with the wolves outside.

“Maka—” Soul started just a moment too late. 

BlackStar was gone in a gust of smoke in the next moment, in his place stood Lykos and she drove a small dagger into my stomach, with a twisted smile on her face. I barely felt anything. I was cold as I dropped Soul, coughing up blood onto the witch in front of me; she kicked Soul aside before he could shift back. 

Soul stood a few feet from us as Lykos shifted her own position, wrapping her arm around my neck from behind me—one hand held firmly over my mouth, the other angling a dagger at my heart. I held a hand to my stomach, attempting to keep the blood from gushing out as the proximity of Lykos set my blood to whispering in my veins. 

“You won’t kill her. You need her.” Soul spoke calmly from his position just a few feet away, but there was an edge of panic to his eyes. 

“I could always try my luck with BlackStar instead; back up lover boy.” Lykos replied coolly. 

Soul cursed, something I barely heard over the sound of blood in my ears. Black spots stained my vision and I fell back against Lykos. “Maka!”

Consciousness became a fight as I tried to come up with anything to do. Smoke began to fill my mouth, bringing my vision back to focus as my lungs protested the pressure. Lykos was pouring her magic into me directly. 

You can hear me in your head now, can’t you Maka. Lykos forced her thoughts into my mind. Is there really a reason for you to resist this, resist me. You don’t have your memories; you don’t even have enough blood in your body to stand up straight. Don’t worry about Soul, I’m sure I can find a way to force my magic into him too.

“No.” I tried to speak against her hand, it came out as a grunt. I tried to push back against her, push her off balance, but she was right. I didn’t have the strength left to do so, my body starting to feel cold against the loss of blood. 

I brought my eyes to Soul’s. If Lykos was bringing me into her world, a world of smoke and mirrors, maybe I could reach her soul like I had Crona’s in the madness. I held onto the tether between Soul’s soul and mine, trying to tell him I was still here, trying to tell him to trust me as I relaxed and let Lykos’ magic wash over me.


	7. Evans

When I opened my eyes again, I was in the woods alone. There was no smoke, no moonlight, no golden eyes, no Soul. It was just me and the trunks of trees with no end, no leaves or birds in branches—just the ever towering trunks climbing impossibly high into the sky like I was an ant. 

Was this Lykos’ soul?

“Hello?” I spoke, my voice disappearing among the trees. 

I took a breath, closing my eyes, trying to search for any sign of another soul—all I felt was a flicker similar to the white wolf’s. I made my way towards the staggering flame, feeling as though I wasn’t moving as the scenery of trees never changed. 

I found the wolf asleep at the base of a tree, its nose tucked behind the fur of its tail. I crouched in front of it, placing my hand on its forehead; it didn’t wake. 

“Hi, I’m Maka.” I found myself talking to the wolf like it could respond. I didn’t know what else to do here.

At the sound of my voice its eyes opened slowly, revealing two human eyes, hazel green irises holding mine. 

“Lykos?” I jerked my hand back from the wolf’s head and it stood.

It walked away into the trees, pausing to look back at me before it disappeared. I followed. 

Then I was outside of the woods. 

Moonlight drifted down into a never ending field, golden yellow flowers bloomed as I walked past them in the grass that grazed my knees. I could feel a soul easily this time, it hummed in the distance like a generator. 

I walked towards the sound with the white wolf at my heels, as we climbed up the hill I saw a glass box, and inside of it was Lykos. 

“Lykos?” I spoke cautiously as we neared the box. 

“She told me not to leave.”

“Who did?”

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“Is she here now?”

“No.”

Lykos stood in the center of the glass box, staring through the clear door at me. She was in a short white dress, which was only short because it was torn like something, or someone, had attacked her. What happened to her? Did she do this to herself? It was like her soul was split into pieces. 

She did not have a silver streak in her hair.

“I’m going to open the door.”

“No!” She screamed, jumping backwards away from the door. “The wolf will get in.”

I looked down at the wolf at my heels, its hazel eyes met mine quietly. “It won’t hurt you.”

“You’re lying. She told me it would. The wolf can’t get in.”

I walked toward the door anyway, curling my fingers around the handle. Lykos started to shriek. “No. No! No! You can’t let it in! Don’t let it in.” 

I pulled the door open with ease and Lykos’ screams turned to feral snarls; her lips pulled back into a grimace just before a howl ripped through her lips. I backed away startled and she fell forward onto all fours before launching herself toward me like an animal.

It didn’t matter, the white wolf had her by the throat in the next moment—its hazel irises still locked onto mine. Lykos never stood a chance. 

“You let the wolf in.” She whispered before her body fell limp, black blood drooling between the wolf’s teeth. 

The glass box and the wolf fell away from my view like someone turned off a T.V. leaving me in complete darkness. I took a step forward to see if I could move, but I wasn’t standing. I was in a sea of water sinking deeper with each movement. I couldn’t breathe, phantom bubbles running from my mouth like they were in need of oxygen. 

“Maka, hey, Maka.” I heard Soul call from somewhere else. 

Soul. I couldn’t speak as I watched the bubbles leave my mouth, floating upwards, away from the sound of Soul’s voice.

He was the wrong way. Why was he deeper? I couldn’t breathe. I needed air. 

“You’re okay Maka. I’ve got you. You’re okay.” I heard him again from below me, the roll of the black water spinning my body throughout the ocean. I wanted to follow the bubbles up, to swim toward the air, but I felt Soul’s soul. The tether tugging at my chest violently, urging me to swim downwards. Even against the screaming of my lungs, I couldn’t ignore the pull, couldn’t ignore Soul as I swam down deeper into the dark waters. 

In the black depths of the water, my memories came crashing down on me like the rolling waves of the ocean. 

“I know my daughter, and she’s going to be a great meister someday.”

“Maka, baby, me and your Dad are taking some time apart.”

“I’m just a cat with an extraordinary amount of power.”

“My names BlackStar, not that I need to tell you that. I’m going to be such a big star that everyone will know my name.”

“I didn’t want to introduce you to my family because they’ve never approved of anything I’ve done, Maka; and I can’t handle them not approving of you.”

“Maka, how did you not know that Soul loved you.” 

“BlackStar and I are dating now.”

“Will you marry me?”

And then my world went dark once more.

When I woke up again my entire body was sore. I didn’t want to speak much less move. I could feel the light on my face even through my closed eyelids; something which caused me to moan as I shifted my hand to try and block the light, apparently aggravating whatever wound was on that arm. 

“Maka?” Tsubaki asked quietly from beside me, like she was worried I wasn’t actually awake. Not again. 

“Tsubaki?” I opened my eyes finding hers on me; she shifted in her chair beside the bed, placing a light hand on my shoulder. “Tsubaki, where’s Soul?”

“He’s talking to Kid; Kid just got back from the witches with Blair and Spirit. Him and BlackStar are telling Kid what happened with Lykos.”

“What did happen?”

“After you defeated Lykos, Soul came out of the cave carrying you with a white wolf at his heels. All the wolves we had been fighting suddenly just stopped, the smoke falling from their bodies as they backed off.”

“I defeated Lykos?”

“Soul said he thought you fainted, but Lykos fell to the ground with you after she tried to fill you with her magic. Not long after that her body just evaporated like the magic she wielded, and the only thing left behind was her soul—which the white wolf promptly ate. Maka what happened?”

“I looked for her soul like I did Crona’s. I couldn’t do anything for Crona until I entered the madness too. A white wolf ate her soul there too, in her madness, wherever that was. Tsubaki.” I sat up, ignoring the strain of my muscles. “I remember everything.”

A smile broke across her face as she lurched forward to hug me; her arms flying around my neck as she crushed me against her. “I was really hoping you would say that, welcome back Maka.”

“How is Soul? How long have I been asleep?” I asked as she pulled back from me. I was afraid of the answer to the second question. 

“You’ve only been asleep for about a day and a half. Soul’s alright, you’re the only one who really got hurt.” Tsubaki stood up. “I can go get him?”

I nodded my head, leaning back against the pillows relieved it hadn’t been another six months. “Please.”

She smiled at me, walking from the room. 

I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the glare of the sun through the windows. I hadn’t meant to fall back asleep, but sleep took me without warning. 

“Shit.” I grumbled, eyes peeling open. I sat back up in bed, glancing towards the window to see if it was still daylight, already knowing it wasn’t; but Soul made eye contact with me before I could confirm the lack of sunlight.

“Soul.” I almost screamed, half falling from the bed to throw my arms around him; immediately regretting the over reaction as pain tore through almost all my limbs and stomach. 

“Ow.” I moaned after my arms were around him. 

Soul tensed beneath me, grabbing my waist to keep me from falling. He stood, not letting go of me, just joining me on the bed instead. I didn’t let go of my grip around his neck as I buried my face into his chest. 

“Maka?” Soul laughed lightly. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall back asleep. Did Tsubaki?”

“She did. She told me you were awake, but she didn’t give me any details other than you were asking for me.”

Sensing what he was wondering I said into his ear. “No. I don’t have amnesia again, Soul Eater Evans.”

He loosed a breath against my ear, his arms tightening around me as he sighed my name in relief. 

“Why don’t you say my full name?” I teased. 

“My memory isn’t the one in question, Maka Albarn.”

“That’s not my name.” I said quietly, sliding back from Soul’s grip so I could look at his face. I saw the worry immediately threading its way into his facial features, even as he tried to school them into something neutral. I smirked at him, shaking my head. 

I leaned forward once more, my hands resting on his chest as I whispered in his ear. “My name is Maka Evans and your wife wants to know where her ring is.”

Soul didn’t reply, didn’t waste a moment as he grabbed my face pulling it to him. His lips crashed against mine so quickly our teeth hit before his lips enveloped mine. My fingers digging into his shirt as his tongue slid into my mouth, parting my lips before I had a chance to catch my breath. Soul pushed me down beneath him, before his hands traveled down my chest; his knee slid in-between my legs parting them as he leaned down again to kiss me. My hands ran across his shoulder, fingers delving into the grooves of his back muscle as they traveled downward. Soul’s mouth left mine, trailing wet kisses down my jowl, my neck, my collarbone. 

His head pulled back so he could stare at me in disbelief. “You remember everything?”

“Everything.”

His hand fell to my face, a gesture I leaned into. “How do you feel?”

“Sore, very sore.” 

“Sorry.” Soul blushed, the red creeping across his face as he moved to get off me, but I grabbed his arm. 

“Where are you going?”

“We are in a hospital you know.” Soul kissed my forehead, peeling himself from the bed. 

I sat back up, wincing slightly. Soul looked down at my arm at the same time I did, blood was seeping into the white bandages. Soul frowned.

“At least its red.” I said sitting all the way forward, letting the bed sheets fall from my legs as I curled them up toward me. I rested my head on my knees as I turned to look at him. “I know I said I loved you before when I didn’t have my memories; but Soul, I didn’t have the slightest grasp on how much I really love you.”

A toothy smirk spread across his face, crinkling his eyes. He dug something out from beneath his black t-shirt; his fingers pulling a delicate silver chain from beneath the fabric, at the end of the chain was two rings—both a white gold color, one thinner than the other. “I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to ask you to marry me again.”

He unclasped the necklace, placing the entire thing in my outstretched hand as I lifted my head from my knees—I slid the two rings from the necklace, the necklace I wore my ring on during missions. 

“Give me your hand.” 

He complied, holding his left hand out to me so I could slide his ring back on. He plucked my own ring from my palm before I could put it on myself. He took hold of my left hand lightly, the warmth from his fingertips radiating across my palm as he gingerly slid the ring on my finger as well—the cool metal ticking my skin as it passed my knuckle. 

“Welcome back, Mrs. Evans.” Soul said, looking up at me with red irises under his eyelashes as his kissed my hand—his lips lingering a moment.

I couldn’t help but smile at him. “Can we go home?”

Soul shook his head no. “Stein came by while you were asleep; he wants you to stay one more night now that you’re awake, just to be safe.”

I sighed dramatically, throwing myself back on the pillows. “Can I at least have some other clothes to wear?” 

“If you want to wear my clothes, sure.” Soul reached behind his chair, digging into a duffel bag to toss me one of his many black t-shirts. 

“What about pants?”

“You don’t need any.” Soul winked, dodging the pillow I lugged at him easily. “Violence is never the answer Maka.”

Despite his words a pair of boxers landed in my lap in the next moment, which I slid on under the covers in case someone walked in. I shrugged the gown off after, not feeling the need to hide my bare chest from Soul, considering we were married. His hand found the scar across my side in the next moment. It didn’t have stitches anymore, it had healed. 

“I’m sorry about that.” Soul said quietly, running his fingers along the edge of it. 

“Now we match.” I said lightly. 

“I think you’re going to have a few more scars than I do.” Soul rolled his eyes at me, his hand moving to peel the bandage back from my stomach, as it was stained red from my earlier movements. “I might as well change this while your shirt’s off.”

Only about two inches of skin were sewn shut. “That’s barely even a wound.” I added, trying to make Soul feel better.

He just rolled his eyes at me. “You could’ve bled to death you know.”

“But I didn’t—”

“Don’t say because I was there.”

“Because you were there.” I said anyway ignoring his interruption. I stretched, also ignoring the pull of stitches across my body, swinging my legs off the side of the bed to stand up. 

“Maka please don’t push yourself.” Soul said standing, preparing himself to catch me if I fell.

I ignored his warning, standing up from the bed. My legs listened, they just hurt considerably. I stretched from side to side, before bringing my fingers to my toes. “See, I’m fine.” 

I took a step forward wrapping my arms back around Soul’s neck lazily. “You worry too much.” I said against his mouth before I kissed him, parting his lips softly with mine. 

Soul’s arms ensnared my waist. “I’m still going to change your bandages, so sit down.”

“Fine.” I sat on the edge of the bed watching as he unwrapped both my calves and then my forearm, before cleaning every wound on my body meticulously. My legs weren’t stitched, puncture wounds from the wolf’s teeth just trailed across them freely. My forearm was the worst of it, it looked like Stein had to do a little work to pull all the skin back together there. 

Soul worked efficiently, wrapping all the offending parts of my body back in white bandages before sliding his shirt over my head. “What am I going to do with you.”

“At this point you might as well be a registered nurse.” I joked, nudging his side. 

He ignored me, brushing my hair back out of my face with his hands. 

“Soul.” I said taking his hand. “Are you really okay though?”

Soul nodded, closing his eyes momentarily. “I’m fine Maka.”

“I don’t mean physically; I can see you didn’t get hurt—”

“Maka I’m okay, really. I’ve got you back now.”

“Soul I really am sorry that I forgot, that I stayed asleep so long, that—”

“Maka don’t apologize; none of that was your fault.”

“It wasn’t yours either.” I said firmly.

Soul smiled. “I know; besides, I wasn’t worried this time. You kept tugging on my soul while you were asleep.”

“Good. I’m glad.” I said standing back up. “On another note, how pissed was my dad when even when I had amnesia, I chose to stay with you.”

Soul buckled over laughing, the sound of it was refreshing, like he really was okay. I guess he kept his promise, not to torture himself. “Do you know he called me almost every day. Do you know how many lectures he gave me?”

“He didn’t.”

“Oh, he did. He didn’t stay away from the apartment either; at least not before Kid sent him on a mission. We walked past him in the lobby multiple times; I have no idea how you never noticed. The man is not a master of disguise.”

I started laughing too. “Where is he anyway?”

“Him and Blair were both with Kid when I came here.”

I didn’t see Blair or my father until the next day; the next day which was a blur of my friends and family visiting. Everyone filling me in on what I missed, and me filling Kid in on my portion of the Lykos mission. I barely got my father to leave the room all day, Blair eventually having to drag him from the premises. All in all, I was more tired at the end of my second day at the hospital than I had been waking up on my first. I passed out way before Soul did, curled against him on the hospital bed. 

Stein sent us home the next day, telling Soul to bring me back to the hospital once a week to check on all my injuries.

We were walking into the apartment when a question randomly stuck in my mind, distracting me from anything Soul might be thinking as I said. “Soul I’ve been meaning to ask you, what happened to that white wolf?”

“When Lykos disappeared, so did the alpha wolf. The white wolf ate both their souls.”

“You already told me that.” I said impatiently.

“I know, give me a minute.” Soul complained. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to have to deal with the wolf, but it just came over and sat beside you calmly, waiting for me to pick you up. It followed me out of the cave, but it led all four of us out of the forest, though it didn’t leave.”

I nodded. “I think that wolf had some part of Lykos’ soul.”

Soul looked alarmed for a moment, before I continued. “I think she fractured her soul with her magic, and I think the good part of her was left in that wolf.”

“How do you know she had a good part left?”

“I don’t, it’s just a feeling.” 

“You always want to see the good in people, don’t you.” Soul said more to himself in disbelief than anything, before he said louder. “You know she about took you away from me not once, but twice. I find that pretty hard to forgive.”

I didn’t have a chance to respond as the apartment door closed behind us and Soul caught my hand before I could get too far from him. “Maka.” Soul spoke, his voice much lower than before. “Do you know how badly I’ve wanted you since you woke up?”

“I’ve only been awake a couple days?”

“No.” Soul pulled me back towards him, pushing my back up against the door we just walked in—his hands on either side of my head. “Since you woke up from the coma.” 

His voice was hot against my throat, the feeling of it chasing heat between my legs. “If I remember correctly, I did try and, you know—”

“Try and what Maka.” Soul brought his mouth to my ear, his tongue flicking lazily against the rim of it as he spoke. 

“Help you out too.” My breath caught as his teeth bit down on the lobe of my ear. 

“Help me out how?” Soul teased, his voice light with humor as his teeth found their way to my throat. 

Apparently, my inability to talk dirty wasn’t just a no memories Maka thing, heat still flushed my cheeks as I tried to answer Soul; one of his hands sliding down my side, slowly finding its way to my ass, hiking my groin against his hardening cock. 

I finally managed to spit out the words. “To make you cum too.” 

Soul’s mouth found mine as his hands yanked my pants down in one swift movement. I kicked them out of the way as he pressed himself into me. He bit my lip, hard, not giving me a moment before his tongue slid against mine, twisting around it as his hand ran atop my underwear—his fingertips just barely grazing my clit causing me to moan as his tongue slid from my mouth. I could already tell we weren’t going to make it to the bedroom. I had missed this. 

Soul leaned back for just a moment to rip my shirt over my head, the cool air of the room chasing goosebumps across my breast as he brought his mouth down to my nipple, rolling it through his shark teeth before he sucked. His left hand grabbed my thigh, fingers digging into the skin as he jerked me closer against him—holding me to him as he rutted his need against my building arousal. 

My fingers managed to find the button on his pants beneath us, doing my best to pull his jeans down, but he had to finish the job—quickly pulling his boxers off as well; his dick springing free from the fabric, slapping against his abdomen before it stood erect between us. I yanked on the edges of his shirt, pulling it over his head as well. He started to push me back against the wall; but I pushed him backwards towards the couch, climbing on top of him as I slid his dick teasingly across the moisture on my underwear, trailing kisses up his chest. He moaned as I drug my own tongue across his nipple, teasing him. 

His hands found my ass, pushing me down harder against his erection. “Maka.” He rasped, starting to tug my underwear down; but I wrapped my hand around his cock, spreading the precum down across his shaft as I pumped him. His hips bucking his length further through my hand. 

I brought my mouth back to his, kissing him sloppily, saliva drooling between our lips as he pulled my underwear out of his way. He brought his hands back to my hips, lining himself up with my entrance before he bucked himself up into me; his dick twitching inside me as I moaned his name—undoing him. 

My forehead landing on his shoulder as he pounded his dick deep into me. He moaned as I drug my nails down his chest—calling my name as I bit down on his neck. “Fuck, Maka. You feel so good.”

I slide my hands down his chest, pushing myself up off him so he could see his dick disappearing in my wet folds. Soul brought his hands from my hips down to my thighs, holding me in place as he continued to fuck me, the wet sound of his cock in me hidden behind the slew of moans escaping us both. 

Soul brought one of his hands to my clit, roughly rubbing the bundle of nerves under his thumb as he continued to fuck me—causing my walls to clinch around his length. “Soul.” I gasped at the added pleasure, nearing my limit as the heat of my arousal concentrated itself unbearably between my legs. 

Soul continued his harsh pace until I came, the walls of my vagina contracting around his cock as he pulled out, letting his orgasm shoot onto my thighs as he came too. My orgasm rolling through my body as he kept rubbing my clit, not letting me come down from my high as I moaned. He slid a finger inside of me, letting my walls clamp down around him helplessly as we both panted. 

As my orgasm subsided Soul slid his finger from inside me, his hands resting on my thighs as he looked at my flushed face. I leaned down to kiss him softly.

“I missed you Maka.” He said against my lips; his own face blushing as well.

“I can see that.” I joked, laughing as his blush deepened. I kissed him again, trailing my tongue along his bottom lip. “I’m going to take a shower, if you want to join.”

I stood up and Soul followed.

We did take a shower, but we hardly got any cleaner, barely escaping the grasp of each other the entire time. By the time we were making our way to the bedroom, I thought I could sleep for another six months, not that I would joke about it out loud. Everything was falling into place, exactly where it should be. The puzzle of my emotions surrounding Soul solved the moment my memories came back. 

As we entered the bedroom my eyes immediately fell to the empty frame on the dresser. “Soul.” I said. 

“I’ll buy a new frame.” He said before I could even make a comment. 

“But where’s our wedding photo?”

He smiled sheepishly, running a hand through his wet hair, flinging water droplets onto the floor. “It’s in my pants pocket, wherever those ended up.”

I felt heat return to my cheeks; I looked away trying to hide my blush. I started to ask why he never just told me we were married, but I knew the answer already—he was trying his best to protect me, even if that meant he didn’t get to call me his wife. 

“You know.” Soul said, using his hand to turn my face back toward his. “I think it’s cute when you blush.”

“We’re married and I still can’t talk about sex.” I rolled my eyes. “How is that cute?”

“Because I love you.” Soul laughed to himself, leaning down to kiss me. “And you wouldn’t be you if you could say sex without blushing. Now sit down so I can wrap your injuries back up.” 

Soul pushed me back lightly onto the bed, although his hand never left mine until I was seated. 

“Also, Soul.” I said as he started winding bandages around my arm. “How did you not call your brother for over a month after I woke up? Have you called him since we got back from the mission?”

“Actually, I was going to call him when we got home, but someone distracted me—more than once.” Soul commented casually without looking away from my arm.

“I’m going to chop you.”

“That’s my girl.” Soul laughed as my free hand came down on top of his head. “I’ll call him as soon as I’m done with this Maka, don’t worry; you can even tell him all about how you scolded me for not calling him sooner.”

He looked up at me and smiled, his face looking brighter than it had in months as I replied. “I haven’t even started scolding you yet.”

And with that our lives fell back together like the pages of a novel pressed together perfectly at the closing of a book.


End file.
